Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Still Up’ On Apple TV+, Where Two Friends Deepen Their Friendship Via Their Bouts Of Insomnia

Remember during the height of the pandemic when there were a bunch of shows that were created via Zoom? Everyone had their own camera, the director and crew were remote, and characters interacted via screens. It quickly got tiresome, mainly because in-person interaction felt much more dynamic. A new British comedy on Apple takes a piece of that concept, where two insomniac friends interact with each other late at night, mostly via FaceTime.

STILL UP: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The door of a house in London. A woman in slippers steps over a kid’s toy to go to the door. “11:27 PM”.

The Gist: Lisa (Antonia Thomas) gladly steps out of the house to go to the 24-hour pharmacy to get some lotion for her daughter Poppy (Bronte Smith), who has the chicken pox. She can’t sleep, anyway; she’s had insomnia for some time now, and nothing works. The only person who can relate is her friend Danny (Craig Roberts, who you might remember from Red Oaks), a fellow insomniac; she calls him when she’s on her way to the pharmacy.

Danny is hiding from his neighbor, Cat Man (Rich Fulcher); he made a lame excuse about visiting every Disneyland on the planet just to get out of joining Cat Man for his cat’s birthday party on the patio. Danny is a veteran insomniac who has tried more remedies than Lisa has. Plus he has the added problem that he hates going outside. Thankfully, as a journalist, he can use the phone.

Lisa recounts how he brought Poppy on a scheduled class trip, despite her having the chicken pox; she had Poppy go in a sheep mask. The purpose? So one of the nosy parents didn’t judge her. She hangs up on Danny briefly when her boyfriend — and Poppy’s stepdad — Veggie (Blake Harrison) calls; he’s trying to get Poppy to sleep by reading a boring book on bricks. Why bricks? Because he’s running a brickathon, where you build a wall after running for a number of miles.

Danny orders a pizza when he realizes he didn’t stock up on food. But the delivery guy needs Danny to come to the door to prove he got the delivery; given that Cat Man refuses to leave the porch, that becomes difficult. In the meantime, Lisa can’t seem to find the pharmacist, and she talks to Danny while she waits. During that time, the same nosy parent she wanted to avoid during the field trip walks in; it turns out that, amazingly enough, her son now has the chicken pox.

While she waits for the pharmacist, Lisa helps Danny fill out a dating profile, but is a bit distressed that when she finishes the profile, his best match is with her (she never took down her profile after meeting Veggie). And it seems that she’s not that distressed about that.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Still Up reminds us of pandemic-era shows where everyone conversed via Zoom, like Social Distance or Love In The Time Of Corona.

Our Take: The aesthetic that we just described above, where people are talking to each other via screens, is what we liked least about Still Up. There’s just something about two characters spending most of a 30-minute episode talking to each other on FaceTime that seems airless and slows things down, even if the chemistry between the characters is pretty good.

It does seem like the series, created by Steven Burge and Natalie Walter, is angling towards something romantic from the outset, as it seems that Lisa has feelings for Danny, ones that have been in place for a long time. There is an indication that they were a romantic pair, at least, briefly, when they first met, but there is little backstory about their friendship beyond that.

There’s also little backstory about why both of them can’t sleep, and what that might be doing to their mental and physical health. We do get some indications that Lisa is anxious about her parenting and how she’s perceived as a mom, and we do think that Danny has a ton of anxieties, but we can only guess how they got to this point, and how long they’ve been leaning on each other in the middle of the night.

There is an arc here, as Lisa and Danny try to figure out their places in the world and with each other. But we wish there were more instances of the two of them meeting in person for some late-night coffee or a drink rather than just see the two of them talk over FaceTime. That being said, Thomas and Roberts are both funny and charming as Lisa and Danny, which is why we want to see more in-person interaction between the two of them.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Danny sees an opening to stand up and toss out his pizza crusts (yes, he finally got a pizza, though in the most convoluted way). But as he stands in front of his window, Cat Man ambles by, holding his cat. “How was Disneyland?” he creepily asks.

Sleeper Star: We see Luke Fetherston briefly as Danny’s neighbor Adam, but the way he explains to the delivery guy why he never orders food out, and he immediately knows Danny’s pizza order was a good introduction to the character.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Lisa goes behind the counter to find the remedy she needs for Poppy, a customer arrives; Lisa gets up and pretends to be the pharmaicist… all the while having Danny still on her phone. We see on Danny’s screen the customer looking down at the phone quizzically a couple of times.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re going to give Still Up a shot because we like Antonia Thomas and Craig Roberts in the lead roles. But its format feels like it will get monotonous quickly, even if the chemistry between its stars is good.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.