Nicole Kidman and Bruna Papandrea executive produce Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch’s darkly comedic anthology series, which contains eight smart pieces about what it means to be a woman today.The trailer for “Roar,” the highly anticipated darkly comedic anthology series slated to premiere globally on Friday, April 15 exclusively on Apple TV+, was released today by Apple TV+. The series is the first to be released under “Roar” creators and co-showrunners Carly Mensch and Liz Flahive’s (“GLOW”) overall contract with Apple TV+, and is based on a book of short tales by Cecelia Ahern.”Roar” is a darkly comedic anthology series of female stories. These eight stand-alone stories, which range from magical realism to psychological horror, involve ordinary women in extraordinary situations. Women eat photos, date ducks, and live on shelves like trophies in “Roar.” Despite this, their problems are universal.
Kidman executive produces the anthology alongside Per Saari and their Emmy Award-winning Blossom Films, in addition to starring in one of the episodes. Bruna Papandrea, Steve Hutensky, and Allie Goss, all Emmy Award winners, executive produce on behalf of Made Up Stories. Executive producers and co-showrunners are Flahive and Mensch, the show’s creators. Theresa Park executive produces for her Per Capita Productions and author Ahern executive produces through Greenlight Go. Endeavor Content produces “Roar” for Apple.Award-winning Apple Originals from today’s most inventive storytellers may be found on Apple TV+. Apple TV+ is available on all of your favourite screens and includes premium drama and comedy series, feature films, pioneering documentaries, and kids and family entertainment. Apple TV+ was the first all-original streaming service to launch around the world on November 1, 2019, and it has aired more original hits and garnered more award recognitions than any other streaming service. In less than two years, Apple Original films, documentaries, and series have received over 200 awards and 900 nominations.
The actors star in an anthology series that combines drama, comedy, and magical realism to explore eight independent fables about womanhood today, alongside Issa Rae, Alison Brie, and others.Roar, however, loses much of the heart that makes these profoundly personal events worth caring about in the first place in its attempts to universalize them. It’s not that the series is sloppy; each episode appears to have been meticulously planned and polished, and even the poorest episodes have a few memorable moments of wit or beauty. Roar’s problem is that in trying to speak for so many people, he ends up expressing very little.
The majority of the imaginative flourishes come from a literalization of a frequent metaphor. At their best, they contribute to the development of the characters and narrative we’re seeing. The marriage market — by which I mean an actual aisle in a big-box store — becomes a way for Anu (Meera Syal) and Vik (Bernard White) to reassess their 37-year relationship, and for us to better understand the restlessness that’s driven them apart, in “The Woman Who Returned Her Husband,” easily the most moving episode of the entire season.
The episodes don’t feel like they’re worth more than the sum of their parts. Even more so throughout the entire series. Roar’s quest for universality comes at the expense of specificity. Instead of being fleshed out into three-dimensional humans with arcs worth caring about in their own right, its characters are flattened into paper dolls acting out quirky little fables meant to reveal greater, more profound discoveries.