There are people for whom exercising means a long, solitary, contemplative run.
That’s the question that drives the most compelling part of Apple TV+’s Physical, a 10-episode, half-hour dramedy with an unrelenting sour streak that’s sure to immediately alienate any viewer who makes the mistake of thinking they’re tuning in for a vaguely campy slice of light-hearted nostalgia.
Sheila once found motivation in ballet, and in ’60s protest movements with husband Danny , but her dance studio closed and Danny has become a complacent college professor more interested in flirting with coeds than big ideas.
At a local mall — the type her pompously progressive hubby views as a scourge — Sheila catches sight of an aerobics class led by the energetic Bunny .
Sheila is hard to like, but nobody knows that better than Sheila, and the role offers Byrne a ripe chance to play the contrast between all-too-perfect exterior — her cheekbones and springy hair could go off and star on a show of their own — and a tragic internalized isolation that leaves her constantly distracted and prone to making the worst decisions possible.
I could explain the different portraits of men feeling emasculated in a world where they’re nevertheless still masters of the universe and women champing at the bit as they’re treated as, at most, passive inspirations for their spouses.
Because Saba is a firecracker and possibly the show’s breakout, and because Pucci’s amiable burnout offers the show its only real laughs, I can almost justify the time spent on their characters .
But at least you wouldn’t resent every storyline other than Sheila’s for sapping the overall momentum, which directors starting with Craig Gillespie never find a way to maintain, no matter how many classic ’80s needle-drops the soundtrack contains.
I’m not sure what the tone of that ensemble would be, nor am I sure that Weisman has really found the tone here — though Physical should put an end to those early rumors that Apple was sanding rough edges off its shows in order to make an aspirational brand.