The Savant could help stop violence in a digital age – so why have Apple delayed it?
The upcoming Apple TV+ political thriller has been indefinitely delayed.
Apple TV+
- Chezelle Bingham
Add The Savant to your watchlist.
Ad
“How didn’t we see it coming?”
It’s an age-old question – often asked in a painful silence after horrifying acts, or lazily written in Instagram comment sections and plastered on placards at protests.
But this is precisely the question Apple TV+’s upcoming show The Savant wants to interrogate. How can we stop acts of violence occurring before they happen? How do we recognise the red flags? How can tragedy be prevented before it’s had the chance to become one in the first place?
Want to see this content?
This page contains content provided by YouTube. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as YouTube may use cookies and other technologies. To view this content, choose 'Accept and continue' to allow YouTube and its required purposes.
Accept and continue
Inspired by a 2019 Cosmopolitan article detailing the life of a woman who infiltrates online extremist groups to prevent acts of mass violence, the show isn’t interested in over-dramatising its brutality. Uniquely, it instead aims to examine extremism at its source: in digital whispers, online forums and dark corners of the internet.
Which is why the recent news that The Savant has been indefinitely delayed, reportedly due to recent, condemnable violent acts in the US, feels like it’s such a huge mistake.
Though previously due to arrive on the platform today, Friday 26 September, on Tuesday an Apple TV+ spokesperson explained in a statement: "After careful consideration, we have made the decision to postpone The Savant. We appreciate your understanding and look forward to releasing the series at a future date."
Jessica Chastain as Jodi Goodwin in The Savant. Apple TV+
Of course, it’s understandable to see why networks and streamers are cautious of releasing such a harrowing series during a tense news cycle, when fiction is so closely echoing reality. But in this volatile, unpredictable climate, it’s not more silence we need – it’s clarity, learning, prevention. And that’s precisely what The Savant aims to make its viewers understand through its eight episodes. It just needs audiences to see them.
The Savant hasn’t been alone in its concerns. Just earlier this year, Netflix released four-part drama Adolescence onto its platform, a show that floored audiences with its portrayal of a 13-year-old boy who is accused of murdering his classmate by stabbing her seven times in the car park behind their school – prompting worldwide scrutiny of toxic incel culture and the online “manosphere”.
These shows serve as warnings. Signs that the red flags are always there – that a child showing his classmate a video of a beheading might actually be something that we should be concerned about, that when a young boy starts calling his mother a “b***h” because he heard some bitter man online doing it and thought it was funny, we tell him that it’s not OK before he becomes that same faceless man he’s seen in the videos. Or something worse.
In an age of digital obsession, where conversations are no longer happening in small, quiet backrooms and instead in very wide, very encrypted, online spaces, they're increasingly becoming harder and harder to monitor – and more of it is happening.
Jessica Chastain as Jodi in The Savant. Apple TV
We’re no longer shocked when we hear another mass shooting has taken place, that another innocent life has been lost for some inconceivable reason that will no doubt be spun into political rhetoric and not mourned as the death of another living, breathing human being.
We’re exhausted by it. We don't keep the news on in the background any more while we work from home or eat our dinner, out of fear we’ll accidentally stumble upon another story we didn’t want to – instead, we scroll past headlines and turn the channel to something that can distract us, something to make us forget that the horror outside our fronts doors is only a few inches from crawling in.
And that’s why the delay of The Savant is so frustrating. Once again, we’re choosing to look away from the issues we need to confront directly – even when the issues are stood in front of us, screaming at us in the face, asking us to understand them, to intervene, to stop them.
As lead actor Jessica Chastain herself put it: “I hate that this show is relevant, but maybe through this conversation and through unearthing this darkness in society, then we're gonna work together to fix it.”
Classically, we might not view television as an intervention. Historically, these kinds of shows have always worked to solve problems backwards – from the aftermath to the origins, but in the case of The Savant, it’s exactly the origin that is most important.
Of course, no TV show alone can stop a shooting – and it would be unethical to suggest as much. What it can do, though, is shift perspective; help us rebuild the narrative from punishment to prevention, and teach us what violence can look like before lives are lost.
“How didn’t we see it coming?”
Ad
We could have. We just looked away.
Authors
Chezelle BinghamSub-Editor
Chezelle Bingham is a Sub-Editor for Radio Times. She previously worked on Disney magazines as a Writer, for 6 pre-school and primary titles. Alongside her prior work in writing, she possesses a BA in English Literature and Language.
Ad
Ad
Subscribe for £1 per week
Too much to watch this autumn? Let Radio Times magazine and app do the choosing, with expert picks across TV, streaming and film.
Ad