I turned in my review of “The Savant” on Tuesday morning. On Tuesday afternoon, Apple TV+
pulled the show from its schedule. Maybe that’s how it’s going to be now: telling you why you don’t get to see a show rather than telling you what it’s like to see it.
Apple has offered no explanation for the decision. But it’s a safe bet that the postponement was a response to the angry fallout after the killing of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk, which included ABC’s short-lived suspension of
Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. (The mini-series had been scheduled to premiere Friday.)
In a statement, the company said only that “after careful consideration” it had decided to postpone the show and plans to release it at some point. The show’s star, Jessica Chastain,
issued a statement disagreeing with the postponement, saying that she and Apple were “not aligned on the decision to pause the release of ‘The Savant.’” (The New York Times reported that the show had first been slated to premiere on Sept. 12 but was pushed back because the company decided that was too close to Sept. 11.)
In the show, Chastain plays a woman named Jodi Goodwin who tracks the online chatter of hate groups and identifies men who are about to put their words into action. The character was inspired by the anonymous subject of a 2019 article in Cosmopolitan magazine called
“Is It Possible to Stop a Mass Shooting Before It Happens?” At the time, the woman, identified as K, was focused on rising threats against women, and experts quoted in the article connected the increase directly to the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
The show, however, lacks any such specific point of view. In fact, it is hard to imagine a show about domestic terrorism with fewer political signifiers in it than “The Savant.” As far as I can remember, there is little or no mention in the eight episodes of actual people or parties, or of actual shootings or bombings. We see and hear the racist, misogynist and don’t-replace-us posts of the men Jodi monitors, but they are not ascribed to or associated with any specific group.
“The Savant” depicts white supremacists because that is what its source material demands. But it has done everything it can to be topical without being “political.”
There is nothing onscreen that could reasonably be construed as disrespectful or inflammatory or unfair. Pulling the show from the schedule could indicate an unwarranted apprehensiveness; it could also simply be consideration — declining to depict violence after people have been unsettled by a violent act. But if that was the reason, why not say so?
The worst answer would be that Apple was afraid to present the truth that there are large numbers of young men who engage in hateful rhetoric online and, on rare occasions, take violent action. And while an increasing number of attacks have been coming from the left side of the political spectrum, in recent decades a significant majority has come from the right, according to research published by
the Cato Institute.
The mini-series, which was created by Melissa James Gibson, a writer and producer for “House of Cards,” bears many superficial connections to K’s story but exercises extreme dramatic license. It takes a piece of reporting about a woman doing a difficult job and turns it into a mix of family melodrama and psychological action thriller.
That is standard television and streaming practice. What is more noticeable about “The Savant” — and more incongruous, in the light of Apple’s reluctance to show it — is how quaint it feels.
Time and American reality raced past while it was being made. The aggrieved rhetoric of the men Jodi tracks is not that far removed from language that has become
acceptable public discourse. The resolve and competence of the federal agents who use Jodi’s information to thwart aspiring terrorists
suddenly does not feel like something that can be taken for granted, amid reports of lowered recruiting standards and
the forcing out of veteran agents at the F.B.I. The typical promise of episodic drama, that the heroine will save the day, rings hollow. Maybe someone at Apple noticed this too.
It’s not reassuring that a series as anodyne as “The Savant” makes one of the world’s richest corporations nervous. How many phones do you have to sell to stand by your TV shows?