Seth Rogen’s Hilarious Apple TV+ Showbiz Comedy

So far in 2025, I’ve seen shows about doctors in urgent care, cannibals stranded in the woods, superheroes battling the forces of evil, vast governmental conspiracies that go all the way to the top. None have stressed me out half as much as Apple TV+’s The Studio, a comedy about the relatively lower-stakes world of moviemaking.

From episode to episode, I squirmed and groaned and held my breath. Between chapters, I had to steel myself to keep going. There were moments I could hardly see the screen at all — sometimes because I was peeking through my fingers, but mostly because I was laughing too hard. The Studio’s strain of cringe humor won’t be for everyone; even as it mellows in the second half of the season, it remains too intense to wind down with or throw on in the background. But for those willing to get on its frazzled wavelength, this is a strong contender for the best new comedy of 2025.

At its center is Matt Remick (Seth Rogen), who from a distance might not seem the type to engender much sympathy. The newly installed chief of Continental Studios, he’s got enough money to drop $2 million on a classic car just for funsies, and enough power to call meetings with Martin Scorsese or demand Ron Howard cut the final act of his latest Oscar-bait drama. But the series turns him into a figure of pity by burdening him with that peskiest of qualities for a man whose job is to prioritize the bottom line above all else: a sincere, Letterboxd-power-user-level love of cinema.

Matt, you see, is being totally earnest when he says he wants his corporate-mandated Kool-Aid feature to be an auteur-driven vision, or gushes that watching Sarah Polley work is “like being with P.T. Anderson on the set of Boogie Nights.” He describes himself as “the most talent-friendly studio executive in all of Hollywood,” and he means it.

Or, at least, he wants to mean it. Creators Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Peter Huyck, Alex Gregory and Frida Perez mine bruising laughs from the gap between Matt’s rosy artistic ambitions and his brutal professional obligations. Sometimes, that means promising his idol the moon only to crush his dreams later, or getting verbally eviscerated by a famously nice director in front of all his peers. Even when all Matt wants to do is be supportive, he’s so desperate to be accepted by his creatives as one of their own that he fails to realize they only indulge his unsolicited notes or bumbling presence because he signs their paychecks.

But shows about misguided bosses are a dime a dozen. What elevates The Studio to nearly unbearable (complimentary) levels of visceral embarrassment is the way it’s shot. Goldberg and Rogen, who directed all ten half-hour episodes, favor long, kinetic takes that follow the characters down corridors or in and out of conference rooms. While they never stretch to the proportions of that 18-minute shot on that one episode of The Bear, you’ll recognize a similar effect. Without the relief of frequent cuts, we’re sucked straight into Matt’s ongoing panic attack of a life.

One storyline sees Matt, along with his ambitious protégé Quinn (Chase Sui Wonders), hard-partying VP of production Sal (Ike Barinholtz, rarely better) and tragically trendy marketing chief Maya (Kathryn Hahn, underused), struggling to figure out what precise mix of ethnicities would be least problematic for a tentpole cast — only to run smack-dab into an even bigger controversy over AI. Others see him seething with jealousy as Ted Sarandos gets thanked in one awards speech after another, or zipping from Burbank to West Hollywood in a Chinatown sendup about the search for a very expensive stolen film reel.

If not all of the plots pass the smell test (as with a premiere storyline about seasoned exec Matt failing to anticipate a marketing conflict that anyone with common sense could’ve seen coming), the spirit of the divide between art and commerce still rings true. Matt yearns for the bygone days of Hollywood, as do his closest creative collaborators, including his mentor Patty (Catherine O’Hara), who was pushed out of her plum studio gig precisely because she didn’t want to make dreck like The Kool-Aid Movie. “I’m like 30 years too late to this fucking industry,” Quinn grumbles, but if anything she’s undercounting. The Studio‘s grainy footage, earthy color palettes and retro-inspired costumes evoke the New Hollywood era to draw the contrast between Matt’s old-school fantasies and very modern headaches.

But the series also shares with Matt a stubborn refusal to let go of the dream of Hollywood. In the characters’ toughest days, the show still makes a point of lingering on the pleasure Matt takes in rewatching Goodfellas for the umpteenth time, or the odd magic of watching Quinn stomp around a backlot while extras in full marching band costume parade behind her.

Then there are the celebrity cameos: While most of the stars are playing less likable versions of themselves, the fact that they’re all here seems a testament to the good will Rogen has amassed over his 25-year career. In comparison to the more savage satire of HBO’s Barry or The Other Two — or to a real world in which a CEO is deleting whole movies for the tax write-offs — The Studio can feel downright starry-eyed.

It seems fitting that the season-ending climax takes place not on a film set but a CinemaCon stage, as the characters try to execute not a virtuosic shot but a glorified sales presentation. Much as Matt might wish to think of himself as an artist, this is his true job. As tropes go, it’s far less inspiring than the biopic-ready one of brilliant creative overcoming skeptical suits to bring their uncompromising vision to life. And yet, as the whole gang stands up there, having poured everything of themselves into this studio, into these projects, into each other, there’s something touching about the sight.

It’s an oft-repeated truism that when you learn how films are actually made — all the infinitesimal moving parts and conflicting visions and minor disasters that go on behind the scenes — it seems a miracle any of them ever get made at all. The same, it seems, is true about the work done by the people behind the people behind those movies. It may not be romantic, but somebody’s gotta do it. If we’re lucky, maybe it’s a guy like Matt. In the very best-case scenario, maybe we get to watch him do it, and to gasp and weep and laugh with him as he does.