Peacock’s Tepidly Twisty Apples Never Fall Is Nothing More Than a Bore

We’ve been a little spoiled by television mysteries lately. From the prestigious (True Detective: Night Country) to the soapy (Death and Other Details) to the case-of-the-week procedural (Wild Cards), there has been no shortage of smart and engaging examples of the genre so far this year. Unfortunately, Peacock’s latest mystery effort, Apples Never Fall, is not kin with those shows—in any way, shape, or form. 

Based on the novel of the same name by Liane Moriarty (author of other book-to-TV hits Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers), Apples Never Fall chronicles the disappearance of Joy Delaney (Annette Bening), a former tennis star-turned-coach and matriarch of the Delaney family. After selling their tennis academy and retiring, Joy and her husband Stan (Sam Neill) found themselves in a loop of fights and mundanity—that is, until a woman shows up on their doorstep one night, bleeding and helpless. Moved by her tale of domestic abuse and resilience in the face of danger, Joy welcomes Savannah (Georgia Flood) into their home, much to the chagrin of her four adult children, Troy (Jake Lacy), Amy (Alison Brie), Logan (Conor Merrigan Turner), and Brooke (Essie Randles). When Joy goes missing a few months later, the family questions both themselves and that mysterious stranger in their efforts to find her. Told over the course of multiple timelines, the Delaney family’s secrets come to light, with each member facing the fallout from their own hidden truths and missteps—all while the mysterious Savannah continues to haunt their memories. 

If that premise sounds engaging and interesting, that’s because it really should be, but the Peacock series fails to offer anything meaningful in its seven-episode runtime. It’s a missing persons story, a classic vanished-without-a-trace mystery, and yet it’s so unbelievably boring. From the kids’ petty and underdeveloped personal drama to the frustrating lack of urgency from both the story itself and the players within it, Apples Never Fall is about as thrilling and mysterious as watching paint dry. At every turn, it feels like no one is ever actually all that interested in bringing Joy home, with each episode finding both the kids and Stan moving at a snail’s pace in their half-hearted efforts to locate their mother and wife. For a show banking on messed up familial drama as its core selling point, each character in this series is simply unlikable but not sinister enough to actually be interesting; they’re just a family of mildly shitty people, and their ultimately tame secrets and lies do very little to justify pressing play on each episode (which are all named after and focus on each individual member of the family). 

The series’ insistence on cutting between its two separate timelines (indicated on-screen by titles of simply “then,” for the time Savannah was living with the Delaneys, and “now”) does nothing but undercut the shockingly bland reveals as they happen. The back and forth dissipates the tension and removes any of the urgency in both of these central mysteries, as the kids make little to no movement in both discovering the true identity of this mysterious woman who lived with their parents and the location of their mother. In the very first episode, as Troy, Amy, Logan, and Brooke slowly realize that Joy might actually be worth worrying about, they meander through every interaction in a way that continues to be the case throughout every single episode until the answers finally just fall into their laps in the home stretch. Both mysteries are half-baked at best, and there’s an unshakable sensation that neither is really water-tight enough to sustain much more than a single episode, let alone seven.

And when it’s all said and done—when the disappearance of Joy and the mystery of this stranger have both been put to bed—Apples Never Fall truly feels like a waste of time. The reveals that unfold in the final episode are shockingly pedestrian, and as the series closes the book on this family and its mild drama, there’s a lingering emptiness; this show spent an impressive amount of time spinning its wheels just for each character to come out the other side relatively unchanged, undeniably for the worst. 

Despite boasting a stacked cast, it unfortunately feels like everyone is sleepwalking through the series, never allowed to be elevated by the material because it simply isn’t strong enough to do so. Every dramatic moment falls flat, and even the over-the-top screaming matches between powerhouses like Bening and Neill never actually feel meaningful since Apples Never Fall does so little to make its audience care about Joy, Stan, their shaky relationship, and their ultimately unlikable family. Brie does her best, but even her charm can’t breathe life into a series so bogged down by shallow characters, shoddy pacing, and overthought plotting. 

More than anything, Apples Never Fall is just downright disappointing. With grand promises of f—ked up family secrets and over-the-top drama, Apples Never Fall fails to deliver on either front, resulting in a mystery thriller that barely heats to a simmer, let alone boils hot enough to justify its overlong binge.

All episodes of Apples Never Fall premiere Thursday, March 14th on Peacock. 

Anna Govert is the TV Editor of Paste Magazine. For any and all thoughts about TV, film, and her unshakable love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you can follow her @annagovert.

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