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.

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.

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.