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Still Up, a new Apple series about insomniacs, might have been a Hopper-esque portrait of the exquisite loneliness of nighthawks. It could have been a dark study of that no-man’s-land between the dead of night and dawn, or a mischievous caper about living while others slumber. What it is instead, is a well-meaning but largely anodyne sitcom featuring a few too many tropes and too much soporific storytelling.
Sleepless in London are the indefatigably peppy Lisa (Antonia Thomas) and affably neurotic Danny (Craig Roberts), thirtysomethings who keep each other company via video calls during antisocial hours. Not that Danny, a flat-bound agoraphobic, is particularly sociable at the best of the times.
For the most part the show is carried along on the duo’s stream of unending consciousness. Meandering debate about, say, the most redundant body parts dovetails with updates on the embarrassing or mildly vexing situations in which they find themselves. There are run-ins with oddball neighbours and stand-offs with rowdy youths; encounters with overbearing in-laws and intrusive pigeons; sliced fingers and mis-sent texts. It’s all very safe, accessible, low-stakes — and lacking the acidity and finesse that Seinfeld used to turn such everyday grievances into an art form.
If the conversational humour is often too light and loose — though elevated by the actors’ rapport and ear for the natural undulations of chit-chat — there’s a predictable scripted heaviness in how the show handles its characters’ inner lives. Between Lisa’s growing dissatisfaction with her exaggeratedly humdrum partner (Blake Harrison), Danny’s various vulnerabilities and the pair’s unarticulated feelings for one another, Still Up resembles a conventional romcom rather than a story with anything specific to say about the psychological and physiological effects of sleep deprivation.
In fact, at the halfway point it’s hard to see how the series would be materially different if Danny and Lisa were remote friends rather than insomniacs. It seems a waste of a potentially novel set-up, but hardly worth losing sleep over.
★★★☆☆
Episodes 1-3 on Apple TV+ from September 22. New episodes released weekly