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Dickinson takes an inside look at the world of TV presenter and mahoghany lookalike David Dickinson…. sorry, I mean, writer Emily Dickinson.
Yes, Emily Dickinson… the poet. She wrote words which you find in books.
“But Dom, why are you watching this when you don’t read books?”, people might ask… because I watch a lot of TV shows and there’s some fantastic dramas coming out in what is clearly a new golden age of television with so much content coming from Netflix, Amazon, and soon Disney+, but now, Apple TV+ have entered the fray with See, The Morning Show, For All Mankind, and also this new series.
We learn at the start that the lady (played by Bumblebee‘s Hailee Steinfeld) was born in 1830 and barely known as a writer in her own lifetime, but almost 2,000 poems were discovered hidden in a maid’s trunk.
She wants her poem published but doesn’t want her name on there because she thinks her father will disapprove.
From the beginning, we see this isn’t a straight forward period drama, first as when she’s instructed to fetch and carry water at 4am, she declares this as “Such bullshit!”, second with modern music featuring, begnining with Off The Radar by Nora Erez, and third, modern parlance is used in the script where Emily’s mum (Jane Krakowski) tries to pair her off with George (Samuel Farnsworth) and Emily replies, “We hang out all the time”.
She’s not interested in him, but as George tells her: “You are such a weirdo! Why am I so attracted to you?”
Well, George, that’s because the geeks will inherit the Earth, and nerdy women are hot.
All that said, in this world, people die of diseases which are preventable these days, or which have long since been eradicated.
This first episode starts off better than it goes to in the second half, but I’ll give it a second episode and see how it pans out from there, but at the moment, I am first drawn to the other new Apple TV+ offerings. However, after one verbal exchange, I liked it when Emily self-referenced with “I love it when people quote me”.
Whereas most Apple TV+ series are around one hour per episode, this is around half that, the opener running for 35 minutes.
Dickinson is one of the new flagship series for Apple TV+ and all ten episodes stream in full from November 1st.
Episode 1 Score: 6/10
Series Directors: David Gordon Green, Silas Howard, Patrick R Norris, Stacie Passon, Lynn Shelton
Producers: Diana Schmidt
Cretaor/Writer: Alena Smith
Music: Drum & Lace, Ian Hultquist
Cast:
Emily Dickinson: Hailee Steinfeld
Lavinia Dickinson: Anna Baryshnikov
Austin Dickinson: Adrian Enscoe
Sue Gilbert: Ella Hunt
Edward Dickinson: Toby Huss
Mrs. Dickinson: Jane Krakowski
Jane Humphreys: Gus Birney
George Gould: Samuel Farnsworth
Henry: Chinaza Uche
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.