Hello Tomorrow!, with Billy Crudup as a smooth salesman selling timeshares on the moon, premieres on Apple TV Plus February 17. Crudup plays Jack, whose faith in a bigger, better, brighter tomorrow inspires his coworkers, and “threatens to leave him dangerously lost in the very dream that sustains him,” according to Apple TV Plus.
Haneefah Wood, Alison Pill, Hank Azaria and Nicholas Podany are also in the cast of this comedy-drama. There are ten episodes.
Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen created the show. The idea for Hello Tomorrow!, set in what the network calls the “retro future”, with jet packs, robots and hover-cars, is rooted in Bhalla’s and Jansen’s mutual fascination with salesmen in America, and their depiction on screen. Jansen mentioned Arthur Miller, who of course wrote Death of a Salesman, and the Maysles brothers, who directed the documentary Salesman, about door-to-door Bible salesmen.
“The salesman, in his capacity for dreaming, and his relentless hope to give people a better experience, embodies this deep, tragic impulse in the American spirit,” Jansen told B+C.
He mentioned watching car salesman training videos from the ‘50s that were just a wee bit hokey, and described Crudup’s Jack as “a brilliant salesman for the very reason that he believes in every word, in every promise he makes to customers.”
The creators had Crudup in mind for the role early on. “When we heard Billy was interested, it was, oh my god, this guy is perfect,” said Bhalla.
They had a meeting with Crudup, who did not need any convincing to get on board. It was, “put me in,” said Bhalla of the actor. “I’ve been waiting for this show my whole life. If you guys wrote this, I don’t need to have this meeting, I know that we believe in the same principles.”
“It was kismet,” Bhalla added.
Jansen noted how Crudup made him cry on the set a few dozen times. “He just bleeds in front of the camera,” he said.
Crudup’s work includes The Morning Show and Watchmen, and films Almost Famous and Eat Pray Love.
The show’s retro-future motif is striking. Think of it as 2050–the future and mid-century America, all rolled into one. A New York Times review said, “The first thing that catches your eye about Hello Tomorrow! is, well, everything. While its conflicts are familiar — too much so, at times — it is visually unlike anything you’ve seen on TV outside The Jetsons. The creators, Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen, have conceived an alternative, future-past Earth that looks like an illustrator was hired to design a space-themed malt-shop menu in 1955 and got hopped up on bennies.”
The review continues, “Tin-can robots in avocado green and goldenrod yellow float about serving drinks and spraying shrubbery. Deliveries arrive to ticky-tacky suburban houses in a hover-van ‘driven’ by a cartoon-video bird. A paperboy pulls a wagon that shoots today’s news out of pneumatic cannons.”
MRC Television created Hello Tomorrow! Bhalla, Jansen and Crudup executive produce with Stephen Falk and Jonathan Entwistle, while Blake Griffin, Ryan Kalil and Noah Weinstein exec produce for Mortal Media.
Going back a decade or so, Bhalla and Jansen worked on the movie The Money with David Milch, who counts NYPD Blue and Deadwood among his credits, and authored the memoir Life’s Work. “We got from David everything we know about storytelling for television,” said Jansen, “and more than a few things about life as well.”
Asked about influences beyond Arthur Miller and the Maysles brothers, Bhalla cited Billy Wilder and Frank Capra. He mentioned “weird stories, these movies that make you laugh, make you cry, frighten you, and make you laugh again”, and offer a “tonal mishmash” as well.
Hello Tomorrow! offers a bit of mishmash as well. The NY Times review concludes, “The deeper you get into Jack’s business and personal deceptions, the more you realize that every character here — even the most upright — is lying to someone, or to themselves, in the sad belief that voicing the lie can somehow make it true. Underneath the show’s sleek shine is a story of beat-up dreamers trying to convince themselves that, with one lucky break, they might lasso the moon.” ■
