When something sounds like a bad idea, the optimistic thing to do is try to find ways in which it might not be bad, given the right execution. A 30-minute streaming comedy about the young life of reclusive poet Emily Dickinson — complete with 21st-century music and slang in a 19th-century setting — sounds like a bad idea, but there’s something in it that might add up to fun, right?
Not really. Dickinson, streaming now on Apple TV+, is a confused, disrespectful mess that manages to turn an American literary icon into a paint-by-numbers influencer whose “not like the other girls” energy renders her portrayal borderline unwatchable. The show attempts to make a point about the intellectual and social repression of women, factors that clearly influenced Dickinson’s work in her time, but instead props the poet up as an example of what happens when creators decide there’s only one authentic way to be a woman.
The root of the show’s issue is its main character. Dickinson goes to great lengths to remind the audience that 16-year-old Emily, played by Hailee Steinfeld, is destined for greatness, but does so by writing her in hypermodern contrast to the rest of the women on the show. From the very first scene, Emily is seen as a scribbling, brash genius who can’t be bothered by girl stuff like making sure her family has water and helping her mother prepare breakfast. While it’s fine to show her hating chores (from the real Dickinson’s correspondence, it’s also a fairly accurate depiction), the show doubles down by painting her mother and sister as aggressive airheads whose 19th-century lady brains simply cannot comprehend Emily's desire to be anything but a housewife. Every other woman on the show is given the same treatment, fitting neatly and irresponsibly into categories like “love interest,” “catty bitch,” or “quirky servant.”
It would be bad enough if Emily were the only three-dimensional person in a show of cardboard cutouts, but Dickinson doesn’t even bother to flesh its title character out beyond a vague, mean-spirited weirdness that makes her hard to root for. The sensitive wildness seen in Dickinson’s poems is absent from the character, save for the obvious moments in which Emily sits down to write, and is replaced by a whining brattiness. She melodramatically writhes around on the floor to spite her parents for leaving on a trip, screams at her friends for getting engaged, and generally treats her peers like dirt for not acting like someone written as a 21st-century Instagram feminist — which is to say, like her.
Dickinson’s loud desire to weave modern influences into its design also interferes with other aspects of the show. Its rock and hip-hop needle drops are just OK, and while the anachronistic slang is effective at humanizing the teens of yore, it’s hard not to cringe when Emily freaking Dickinson refers to Death as “sexy as hell.” This entire production yearns to find the sweet spot where blending history and modernity says something interesting, and lands instead on the excruciating image of pre Civil War–era kids twerking at a house party.
There are a few moments where Dickinson leans harder on its ambient weirdness and mines something interesting out of its otherwise mean, flat bedrock. Wiz Khalifa’s too-brief appearance as Death (complete with the show’s single best costume) is a highlight of the first episode, and a surprise vocal cameo from Jason Mantzoukas as a giant, horny bee is delightful. If the rest of the show matched the boldness of those moments, it might be worth sticking around for.
The current roster of consistently fun teen shows (see: Riverdale, Sex Education, Roswell New Mexico) that don’t demean their female characters outshines Dickinson, making it hard to imagine any discerning Gen-Z audience member maintaining an Apple TV+ membership just to catch up on the rude adventures of Emily Dickinson. The show amounts to a cheap and unworthy take on the life of an American icon and is best skipped in favor of almost anything else.
