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How Apple TV+ Cornered the Market on “Prestige Dad TV”

From Hijack and Slow Horses to Masters of the Air and Manhunt, if it's ambitious and star-studded and features competent guys of a certain age handling serious, maybe even historic business, chances are one network has it.

As if the punchy name and true crime vibe wasn’t already intoxicating to dads, Manhunt is set in 1865 (yes) and about U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (yes) trying to track down John Wilkes Booth in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination (oh yes). Check out Gary Oldman (his last name is literally “old man”) in Slow Horses, fully embracing his inner crank and giving one of his best performances as a former Cold War agent who can’t stand his incompetent younger co-workers. “Thirty years ago,” Read wrote, “ Succession would've been a Dad Thriller starring Sean Connery as Logan Roy, William Baldwin as Kendall, and Rene Russo as Shiv.” The dad-thriller is one of many film genres that have largely disappeared, so we may not ever see a movie like TheFugitive in theaters again—but it’s only a matter of time before we get an equivalent eight-part series.

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