I'm not saying Apple TV+ has an issue with repetitive storytelling, but the new drama Before is the service's third series featuring a renowned comic actor playing a man mourning his dead wife. Not the streaming platform's third series ever to rely on that hoary trope.

It's disjointed in its best moments and flat-out bad in its worst, and by the end of the series, it feels like a waste of time.

Billy Crystal is going darker than audiences have ever seen him before in "Before," a new Apple TV+ psychological thriller premiering on Friday. But it was not a role that the actor and comedian expected to take on.