Premiering this fall on Amazon, this is Woody Allen's first major foray into television in 22 years and his first time ever writing and directing a series. He stars alongside Miley Cyrus and Elaine May. The series is set in the 1960s.

This should be a delight. I am a huge Allen fan, and I always anticipate a new project from him. And this will come in a year where his annual movie (Café Society) is a strong one.

Here is the first clip:

Will definitely watch - I usually enjoy Allen's films, even though I feel his efforts in the past few years have been merely 'good' (the last one I LOVED was Blue Jasmine), the only one as of late I've outright hated was To Rome With Love.

This is decent and stronger, I believe, than the scathing reviews indicate. It is very obviously a mid-tier 100-minute Allen comedy to which he added around 40 extra minutes of tangential material before arbitrarily dividing into it six parts. The concept of an "episode" is rarely less significant than it is here; it would be bizarre if this were, say, airing every Sunday on a cable channel.

I would say the fifth and sixth episodes are the best, but it would be more apt to say the third act is the strongest.

But, again, I largely enjoyed it. Its virtues and shortcomings are predictable. The photography is gorgeous. The one-liners are frequently hilarious. It is an easygoing and modestly pleasurable viewing experience. However, the exposition can be extremely leaden, particularly early on, and it never seems overly interested in the social upheaval of the 1960s beyond the paying of lip service, although it is novel to see Allen's simple-iconic opening credits set to Jefferson Airplane rather than jazz or classical. Allen and Elaine May have their roles down pat and share an organic, zesty chemistry. (May and her 66-year-old daughter Jeannie Berlin [Inherent Vice, The Night Of] almost register as the same person now.) Miley Cyrus is...all right. I suspect she requires more focused and instructive direction than the detached, over-and-out-by-5 Allen is willing to give these days.

Objectively, though, I suspect this will be regarded as a cautionary tale: the peril of throwing a huge amount of money at a famous film director to do a TV show, any TV show, solely because of name recognition.

I finished this today. It's fine, mid-tier Allen and if it was a film it would have received middling reviews and barely made a dent at the box office. I did think Elaine May was fantastic though and there were quite a few funny moments. It definitely plays more as a feature split into parts though - it doesn't have an episodic nature to it at all.