Apple TV+'s new show looks hilarious and confusing at the same time

Apple TV+ has arguably already achieved something that puts it in the pantheon of the best streaming services you can pay for right now – trust. If you've been subscribed to it for any length of time, there's a very good chance that, like me, you've started to implicitly trust its quality control for new shows.

Put more simply, it generally makes good things, rather than bad ones, so even though its first full trailer is a little baffling, I still have every reason to assume that Government Cheese will be great. It stars the always-impressive David Oyelowo and will arrive on Apple TV+ on 16 April.

Government Cheese — Official Trailer | Apple TV+ - YouTube

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If the trailer is a little confusing tonally, then Apple's blurb does clear things up a good amount. It calls the show a "surrealist family comedy", which isn't exactly the most established of genres – although Apple TV+ has demonstrated that it can do weird shows with mainstream success (think Severance).

Hampton Chambers (Oyelowo) gets out of prison in a slightly different version of 1969 to find that the family he left behind has been getting on fine without him. He sets about trying to make himself indispensable to the family unit once again, and it would seem that the invention of a self-sharpening drill might be his ticket to paradise.

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As the trailer makes clear, though, things won't go as simply as he hopes, though, with criminal interests still determined to keep him in their grasp, and there's a strong dash of slapstick in some of the comedic notes being hit. I'd also expect some heartfelt moments, though, and I'd be surprised if (given its setting) the show ignores race relations, either.

That all makes for a really interesting blend of ideas and plot threads, but we won't know whether it all works until the show starts. As I said at the top of this piece, though, if I was going to give one streamer the benefit of the doubt right now, it would absolutely be Apple TV+ – so I'll be tuning in to at least a few episodes to see how things pan out with Government Cheese.