Apples Never Fall (Peacock) is just a travesty. Mostly, the show suffers from poor direction and writing, but I can pinpoint some specifics. This show centers around a retired wife (Bening) who goes missing from her family, and former tennis star husband (Sam Neil). Her kids think something is afoot, so they start investigating, and over the course of 7 episodes, we will learn why Apples Never Fall (far from the tree). They introduce a character, Savannah (Georgia Flood), who shows up in the middle of the night supposedly fleeing domestic abuse. Flood delivers one of the worst performances I’ve seen this year. Nothing she says ever seems remotely real, and she always seems like she’s in an acting seminar from Barry and not doing a good job of it. But, she’s not helped by the writing, which is so bad that it actually has Neil sit down in bed, and flip on his TV just in time to catch “Breaking Tennis News” about someone he knows. Look, even on the Tennis Channel, I doubt there’s something called Breaking Tennis News, and I certainly don’t think Neil is talented enough to turn on the TV at the right time.Little things like that pile up over the episode. Bening and Neill are fine, with the pithy script they’ve been given. The written audio description is really well done. From the opening bike ride, to some other terrific character description, and scenic and set stuff. I do like this narrator’s voice, but she is WAY too upbeat for a missing person/murder mystery type show. WAY too upbeat. This show needs assistance from having a narrator reading something more dark than this. She’d be great in lifestyle programs, sitcoms, lighthearted stuff like So Help Me Todd, and films like the recent Irish Wish. But, her voice detracts from the seriousness of the subject matter. It’s too light, upbeat, and honestly soothing. If the aim is to have her give us a false sense of security, it’s kind of working, because I don’t take this series seriously at all, and I really wanted to love the new Annette Bening show.

Masters Of The Air (Apple Plus) continues its excellence, with an episode that saw one of our main pilots hit his 25th successful flight and earn his ticket home, only to re-up knowing that he now had to survive 30 flights in order to go home. Damn. I don’t know who will end up surviving this show, but they are doing a god job of showing us many levels, and the audio description is among the best I’m currently watching.

I figured out the scheme at ABC this season with Not Dead yet (Hulu) and their most recent episode. It’s a cost-cutting strategy to the max. Despite this being a very American show, and the narrator having no British accent, she used “note” and ‘torch” in place of money/dollar bill and flashlight. These are typical swaps when you listen to narration developed in the UK. I’m used to hearing UK audio description, so it doesn’t bother me, especially if it is a British show or film. Here, it does feel out of place, because it is just writers choices that are not in the line of how American audiences speak. So, I think about how the studio likely anted one track to ship all over, and this was how they cut costs. The episode itself was funny, and this is a show I wish Emmy voters watched more. I would love to see Gina Rodriguez, Lauren Ash, or Rick Glassman get Emmy nominations.

I also enjoyed this weeks episode of Life and Beth (Hulu) a lot. Beth has to help her train wreck of a friend through his experience of just finding out he’s the father to a 16 year old girl that wants to meet him. This is done surprisingly well, and Amy Schumer is solid in this episode as well. It also features flashbacks to when Beth was young, and the time she spent with her father. The audio description here is pretty good.

Tiny Toons Looniversity (MAX) fixed one of its biggest missing character problems in the first episode, having Elmira come back in an episode that largely features her. She was a character once big enough to have a spinoff where she teamed up (for lack of a better phrase) with Pinky and the Brain, so her absence from Season 1 was noted by a lot of fans. I doubt she’ll be in every episode, but most of the characters aren’t anyway.