Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have, of course, grown up a lot since their screenwriting collaboration on Superbad in 2007. But even just a slight whiff of that juvenile mayhem would not have gone amiss in this often-sterile satire on the Hollywood machine. Unsurprisingly, Rogen takes top billing as Matt Remick, the newly appointed head of Continental Studios, a struggling behemoth that needs a major hit. Remick believes in cinema as art and is determined to create big-screen history in his new role through integrity and vision. Bummer for him, then, that his boss, Bryan Cranston’s Griffin Mill, takes the opposite view: ‘film’ is a dirty word and the bottom line is the top priority.

Remick blunders through his opening days in the post, upsetting top directors (Martin Scorsese and Sarah Polley among them) and lying through his teeth to all and sundry in a bid to rescue himself while merely digging ever widening and increasingly deeper holes to fall into. You’ll never find yourself covering your eyes feeling cringe or despair as every move goes pretty much as you’d imagine it would. It’s not all bad news, though, with Kathryn Hahn, as per usual, being the best thing in everything she appears in (here as a permanently raging marketing exec) while Catherine O’Hara happily dials down any potential Moira-isms to play the mentor stabbed metaphorically in the back by her pupil when she is passed over for the top job. 

The Studio is never a drag, it just fails to soar (and the constant celebrity cameos are either obvious or stale) while Rogen and co attempt to make an occasionally lacklustre script sizzle. There’s a real temptation to wonder how much more on-point it might have been with someone like Armando Iannucci or Jesse Armstrong guiding the project. The swearing would certainly be more creative. 

New episodes of The Studio are available every Wednesday on Apple TV+.