Seth Rogen is about to drop the very best TV show of 2025-Ruth Lawes-Entertainment – Metro

Consider this an act of great public service. I want you to fetch your calendars, find March 26, strike out any plans and put a huge red circle around it, for that is the day when the best show of 2025 premieres.

You’ll laugh out loud, shrivel with second-hand embarrassment, marvel at the slick cinematography, and delight in A-listers from Martin Scorsese to Zac Efron sending themselves up in Apple TV comedy The Studio.

It stars Seth Rogen as spineless Hollywood executive Matt, who likes to think he’s in it for the ‘art’ but in reality bends his morals to satisfy commercial interests while sycophantically pandering to any celebrity walking through his office door.

Each of the 30-minute episodes (and here I want to say thank you to Apple TV for preserving the dying art of short episodes, a welcome relief in world swimming with never-ending content) centres on Matt hopelessly tackling a studio crisis.

Even if you’re not interested in the process of filmmaking, you can’t help but chuckle as Matt tackles Olivia Wilde down a hillside or get booted out of a party by its host, Charlize Theron, for making Scorsese cry.

The Studio will be one of the best TV shows you watch this year (Picture: Apple TV Plus)

Seth plays a spineless Hollywood executive in the show about filmmaking (Picture: Apple TV Plus)

The Studio is The Bear mixed with Call My Agent. A stressful, engaging workplace drama but with the comedy (because, to be clear, despite what the Golden Globes says, The Bear is not a comedy) and delectable A-list cameos of Call My Agent.

It is also a twisted love letter to Hollywood. Babylon, the confused Margot Robbie film, mercifully, it is not. On surface level, The Studio is very much tribute to filmmaking and it is not even subtle about it. It slaps you round the face with its meta-ness; for example an episode about a film noir is shot like a film noir and there’s plenty more where that comes from.

And If you’re more of a film buff than me, there are undoubtedly countless more concealed Easter eggs. At the very least, I noted a director’s fave, a nod to the late David Lynch’s Lost Highway, and a brilliant slapstick sequence that wouldn’t be amiss in a Charlie Chaplin film featuring its star: a burrito.

But it also does not shy away from its many societally damaging flaws. The excruciating discussions about how to cast a Kool Aid film, in which diversity is dictated by marketing potential, will make you wince.

Like Call My Agent, The Studio is peppered with A-list celebrity cameos (Picture: Netflix)

It also has all the stress of fellow prestige workplace drama The Bear (Picture: AP)

The Studio’s casting, however, is exceptional. It’s impossible to pick a stand out and all the actors look like they’re having a ball. Rogen, for fans of his earlier work like Kocked Up and Superbad, will be unrecognisable for not being a stoner slacker. Instead, he is mature, self-assured but still definitely a shark as Matt.

He is flanked by the brilliant Chase Sui Wonders as his career-hungry creative executive, Quinn. She perfectly balances the tightrope of being ruthlessly ambitious but naieve. A wolf who still hasn’t shed her sheep clothing.

Some of her best scenes are with more senior and old-guard executive Sal (Ike Barinholtz). She wants young edgy directors, he only cares about bums on seats and their inter-generational sparring is electric.

Then, of course, rounding off the core studio team is marking director Maya, played by Kathryn Hahn. She is direct, obnoxious and arguably the Hollywood counterpart to Absolutely Fabulous icon Patsy (Dame Joanna Lumley). Hahn is suitably deliciously awful in the role.

You still have a few weeks until you get sucked into The Studio. But strap in and brace yourself for one hell of a televisual ride.

The Studio premieres on Apple TV on Wednesday, March 26.

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