Anna Daniels
Aside from lending his voice to a few episodes of Robot Chicken, Chris Evans hasn’t appeared on a TV series since popping up in the pilot episode of the quickly-cancelled 2003 drama Skin. But in the wake of wrapping up his stellar run as Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and co-starring in the murder mystery Knives Out last year, Evans is finally heading back to the small screen – this time in another murder mystery.
Evans is headlining and executive producing an adaptation of the bestselling book Defending Jacob for AppleTV+, and he’s managed to pull together a great cast to join him, including Michelle Dockery (Downton Abbey), Jaeden Martell (It), J.K. Simmons (Whiplash), Cherry Jones (Succession), Pablo Schreiber (The Wire), Betty Gabriel (Get Out), and more. Watch the first trailer for the new series below.
Defending Jacob Trailer
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQfeoRLvfqU?feature=oembed&w=740&h=416]
This looks compelling as hell – maybe even compelling enough for me to finally start exploring my one-year free trial of AppleTV+. Mark Bomback (Unstoppable, The Wolverine, War for the Planet of the Apes) created the series, which is based on William Landay’s 2012 novel. Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game, Passengers) is directing.
I don’t want to minimize the very real life-and-death impact of the coronavirus, but there is a small part of me that wonders if the coronavirus could be an unexpected boon to AppleTV+. Many people still didn’t know this service existed even months after its launch, but with everyone (hopefully) staying inside and having some extra time on their hands, perhaps people will stumble across this platform in their quest to find new things to watch.
AppleTV+ has attracted some of the biggest names in Hollywood, but the biggest thing the platform has to a hit is The Morning Show, which got off to a slow start before eventually finding an audience as the season went on. Perhaps the guy who played Captain America can inspire some MCU fans to give this a shot? That’s a bit of an uphill battle, though, since Marvel Studios has proven that people seem to care more about Marvel than the individual actors who star in their movies. (Just ask Robert Downey Jr., who’s still probably out there nursing his box office wounds from Doolittle.) But Defending Jacob definitely has that “prestige TV” aesthetic, so maybe it’ll be the big crossover hit the streaming service has been waiting for.
Defending Jacob premieres on April 24, 2020.
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