Get ready to sweat, from both dramatic tension and some 80s-tastic workout moves: Rose Byrne returns as the star of Apple TV+’s biting black comedy Physical.
Season 2 of Physical will premiere on Apple TV+ from June 3, after the success of season 1. Byrne plays self-loathing fitness guru Sheila, who went from finding meaning in her aerobics class to stealing the instructor’s style and building her own lycra empire.
Now, Body by Sheila is a modest hit, with the puffy-haired maven forced to endure boardrooms and cocktail parties of boring male investors in the trailer below. One face that’s a bit more friendly and familiar is The White Lotus star and fellow Aussie Murray Bartlett, playing an effervescent, butt-shaking instructor with his own cult following.
As he points out in the trailer, it’s unclear whether Sheila merely admires this new guy or is seeking to undermine him and steal his moves, much like she stole Bunny Kazam’s (Della Saba) audience. On a more personal front, things look pretty dire for Sheila’s marriage to the feckless Danny (Rory Scovel), still rocking a stache and specs that place us firmly in 1980s San Diego.
Reviews for season one were quite polarising, with some claiming the series as savage dark comedy, but many critics finding the tone to be too bleak: its Rotten Tomatoes summary reads, “not even a magnetic performance from Rose Byrne can save Physical from its exhausting parade of unpleasant characters and plot choices.”
However, European reviewers ate up all of Physical, and will probably continue to do so with season two. The German publication Spiegel was amused at American distaste for the series, pointing out that “snarky social satire pitches into body cult and consumeristic insanity to our veritable pleasure; American critics were rather appalled without any reason.” Maybe it all hits too close to home, despite being set in Reagan’s America.
