Hello Tomorrow!

It’s worth streaming Hello Tomorrow! for the visuals and for Crudup’s lead performance. But it’s going to need to show us more than what it’s showing in its first episode for us to continue past the first handful of episodes.

While the first episodes are fun to watch – particularly with all of the devices the production designers have created – it’s never clear where it’s headed. ... “Hello Tomorrow” takes a while to show its hand and, then, it’s likely bluffing. With Crudup at the helm, this could go anywhere.

“Hello Tomorrow” may look inviting in its bizarre blend of iconography, but it’s frustratingly conventional at its core. For all Jack’s talk of dreams, he’s no Don Draper.

Stories about seduction need to seduce the viewer, but Hello Tomorrow! evokes dread instead of danger, and, over the course of 10 episodes, the vibe wears thin. So, while the action picks up in the final episodes, it isn't quite enough to redeem the entire enterprise.

There is a whole bundle of talent with not much to do and no direction. As with everything Apple – the show may lack substance, but its production values are impressive.

In general, “Hello Tomorrow!” breezes past the world-building, hoping, not unlike Jack, that you’ll get too caught up in the pretty pictures to worry about the details. And damned if it doesn’t work, some of the time. ... But the series is so stylized, not just in the design but also in the performances and the “Guys and Dolls” dialogue, that the characters often feel cartoony and unconvincing. What is thoroughly, achingly real is the pervasive theme of lies and why people tell them.

Hello Tomorrow! has much to say about hope, delusion and the American dream, but struggles to craft characters grounded enough to sell its ideas.

The series still can’t decide whether it’s a comedy or drama. ... The necessary tension and conflict to drive their stories home is muted by a weak narrative. Momentum is an issue.

The slight plot never quite catches up to the concept, and the production design consistently outshines the mysteries. The show plods along at a strangely restrained pace and perhaps should have taken the advice of its protagonist and remembered the “Wow”.

Although the cinematography foregrounds the fun technology, the plot never investigates its consequences. ... The effect — not helped by the flatness of most of these characters — isn’t nuance or complexity or even Coen-esque quirk. Haneefah Wood elevates her material, and both Hank Azaria and Jacki Weaver offer comic relief, but this series feels like satire in search of a target.

The ideas are unrewarding enough that the worked-over look of the show grows tiresome, as though it’s covering for a lack in the series’ writing.