Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet (Apple TV+)
Dickinson is wilder, Little America is more poignant and The Morning Show has more stars, but Mythic Quest is the first Apple TV+ show that I truly love. Created by Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day and Megan Ganz of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, it’s a half-hour comedy (which has already been renewed for a second season) set at the offices of the company behind a mega-hit multiplayer game in the World of Warcraft vein. While Silicon Valley comparisons are inevitable, Mythic Quest is a subtler, slightly kinder, more character-driven series. McElhenney’s creative director Ian has the arrogance of T.J. Miller’s Erlich Bachman, yet he doesn’t need to be a total buffoon to clash with a colorful staff that includes put-upon lead engineer Poppy (Australian actor Charlotte Nicdao, playing the series’s secret protagonist), creepy fantasy-novelist head writer C.W. Longbottom (the great F. Murray Abraham) and a weirdly intimidating assistant, Jo (Jessie Ennis of Better Call Saul, hilarious). The show manages to acknowledge the sad state of women in tech without erasing female characters; instead, they work mostly in thankless or low-level jobs, like the sweet duo of game testers who might be falling for each other (Ashly Burch and Imani Hakim), grimly aware that they’re being undervalued. For Community fans it’s a treat to see Ganz, that show’s best writer, reunite with star Danny Pudi—in a role as the company’s sociopathic “monetization” guy. And an episode in which the Mythic Quest team attempts to purge neo-Nazis from their platform may be the single funniest thing I’ve watched this year.
