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What's best to watch on Apple TV+ during the upcoming free weekend [u]

The second season of 'Severance' won't start until late in January 2025, but viewers can catch up on its first season -- image credit: Apple

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Apple TV+ is going free for one weekend because it lacks viewers — but it is far from lacking in absolutely superb shows to watch. Here's what to see first, and just why Apple is doing this.

Apple is cutting down on blockbuster movie theater releases and one impact is that the profile of its Apple TV service will be lower. Since the service consistently has only a small fraction of the audience that Netflix and Disney+ get, Apple has been working to get it in front of more people.

As recently teased, the latest attempt takes place on the weekend beginning Friday 3 January 2025 and ending Sunday 5 January. For those three days, the whole of Apple TV+ will be free to watch without subscription.

Originally, Apple announced the free weekend as being only the Saturday and Sunday, which seemed odd since many people will still be on a Christmas/New Year break on the Friday. Then, too, Fridays are often when new episodes of shows drops, but this time only the season finale of "Silo" is due on January 3, 2025.

New viewers can now catch that as soon as it drops on Friday, but truly new viewers should race to see "Silo" from its season 1 opener. And they should prepare to lose most of the weekend binging on the drama.

It's a curious thing but for just about the only time, you can argue that there is too much to watch on Apple TV+. Alongside "Silo" and "Severance," there are more superb dramas such as "Slow Horses," "Bad Sisters," "For All Mankind," "Lessons in Chemistry" and so many more before you even get to comedy — or films.

Apple TV+ has a poorer track record with films, but its highs are high. The late 2024 movie "Wolfs," for instance, immediately became the most-watched film in the streamer's history.

And then no streamer can ever take away from Apple TV+ the fact that it was the first, and remains the only, one to win a Best Picture Oscar. It got that Academy Award for "CODA," which like all of Apple's shows remains available to watch.

That's actually a key differentiator between Apple and at least services like Disney+ and Amazon Prime. It might cancel shows — and it's a tragedy that "Schmigadoon!" didn't get a third run — but it doesn't remove them from the service.

It just doesn't add shows all that often, either. Unlike with the Apple Vision Pro, though, this doesn't appear to be because the shows aren't being made fast enough, it's because Apple TV+ is careful what it commissions or produces.

Apple also does not do what might have been expected, which is to buy in whole libraries of shows from other firms — although it is rumored to have discussions with MGM.

If you stream it, they should come

You can look at Apple TV+ as having a fine collection of shows and films, perhaps even an exceptional one. But apart from when you just have two days to sample it, the service still feels limited compared to others.

Given that Apple won't release details, and you'll go cross-eyed trying to count them yourself, the latest figures available are from November 2023. Streaming aggregator Reelgood estimated that Apple TV+ then had 139 shows and 69 movies.

Amazon Prime, for comparison, was then estimated to have 2,135 shows and 12,071 movies. Netflix had 2,495 shows and almost 4,000 films.

So in late 2023, the Apple TV+ catalog was around 3.2% the size of Netflix's — and 1.46% the size of Amazon's.

To be fair, Netflix has been building its audience since 2007, and Amazon actually beat it by a year, coming out as Amazon Unbox in 2006. Plus Amazon's offering is part of its Prime membership option, so there will be people who have Amazon Prime Video yet never watch it.

Apple is a newcomer to streaming, but even at its start in 2019, it had something its rivals didn't. At launch, Oprah Winfrey explained that she was bringing her book club to it because "Apple is in a billion pockets, y'all."

Within two years, Apple had announced that this had doubled to two billion active devices worldwide.

Since the Apple TV app is available on just about every Apple device bar the Apple Watch and the Apple Pencil, it's startling how few subscribers the streaming service has. There's no way to be definitive about how many it has, since Apple won't say, but it appears to be comparatively few.

According to the Spanish site Evoca.tv, in August 2024, Apple TV+ had "over 25 million subscribers." That does presumably include people who only get it because of a free trial or because Apple TV+ is included in all tiers of the Apple One bundle, though, so it isn't a fair count of how many people are watching.

Whereas the same site claims that, for instance, Netflix has more than 282.7 million subscribers. Apple TV+ therefor has less than 9% of Netflix's audience.

So if, subjectively, the shows on Apple TV+ are exceptional, something else is stopping most of two billion Apple users subscribing to it. That could come down to people just not knowing of the service, though "Ted Lasso" became a breakout hit and it's been followed by "Slow Horses" and "Severance," shows that have had wide press and attention.

Ultimately, that may be what makes Apple TV+ a hit — the fact that it does genuinely keep on making exceptional television. But people won't watch if they don't know about it, so Apple has always tried getting Apple TV+ to new people, such as subscribers to Canal+ in France, or in-flight with Air Canada.

Apple has never given free access to its whole service before. It may not have done so now, either — the company has not said whether all of its subscription sports will be included.

But even opening up everything else for free is a new and a big move for Apple. It's curious that out of the entire year, it has possibly picked the quietest weekend for new shows and films.

Except it is the first weekend of 2025. Expect every show, every episode, and every movie, to be prefixed with an ad promoting the new series coming in the next few months.

Updated: 4:35PM Eastern with news that Apple has extended the free weekend to include Friday, January 3, 2025.



19 Comments

JoeMacUser 2 Years · 1 comment

I think Apple is going for quality over quantity. I think it’s the right strategy vs. what Netflix is doing. Also, Apple is at a slight disadvantage as far as streamers since they don’t have famous tentpole platforms to draw in viewers (Disney+ has Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, etc., and Paramount+ has Star Trek) though one might argue that’s changing with the quality shows they do have. I also wonder how many people don’t realize they can get AppleTV+ without owning an Apple product. They can use the app on many TV platforms. 

Xed 5 Years · 2900 comments

Fridays are often when new episodes of shows drops, but this time only the season finale of "Silo" is due on January 3, 2025.

The above sentence doesn't read correct to me. Am I missing something?

anonymouse 16 Years · 6982 comments

One show not mentioned in the article that is absolutely worth watching is "Shrinking". Given that it's only at two seasons so far, you could potentially watch the entire available series in a weekend.

Xed 5 Years · 2900 comments

One show not mentioned in the article that is absolutely worth watching is "Shrinking". Given that it's only at two seasons so far, you could potentially watch the entire available series in a weekend.

I may have to give that another go. I watched the pilot episode but it didn't hook me.

anonymouse 16 Years · 6982 comments

Xed said:
One show not mentioned in the article that is absolutely worth watching is "Shrinking". Given that it's only at two seasons so far, you could potentially watch the entire available series in a weekend.
I may have to give that another go. I watched the pilot episode but it didn't hook me.

I've never made it through the first episode of "Severance" — I always fall asleep in the middle of it and wake up somewhere in episode 2.