Overview
If there was a Morpho machine IRL rather than just in The Big Door Prize, and it dispensed cards that described the potential of television shows instead of people, this is what it might spit out about the Apple TV+ program that it's in: "comforting". This mystery-tinged existential dramedy is filled with people trying to discover who they are and truly want to be after an arcade game-esque console appears in their small town out of nowhere, and the series is both thoughtful and charming. In making the leap from the page of MO Walsh's book to the screen not once but twice now, The Big Door Prize has always also proven both cathartic and relatable viewing.
Timing, dropping season one in 2023 as the pandemic-inspired great reset was well and truly in full swing, is a key factor in why the show resonates. Last year as well as now — with season two debuting on Wednesday, April 24 — this is a series that speaks to the yearning to face questions that couldn't be more familiar in a world where COVID-19 sparked a wave of similar "who am I?" musings on a global scale. Everyone now knows the scenario, then, before even watching a minute of The Big Door Prize. Everyone has been living this concept for half a decade. For viewers, of course, it was the drastic change of life as we know it due to a deadly infectious disease that got the planet's inhabitants probing how we're each meant to spend our lives — and to pine for an easy response at a time that's been anything but.
Nothing IRL is doling out "royalty", "superstar" and "liar" in white lettering atop a gorgeous shade of blue, though. Actually, the Morpho in The Big Door Prize isn't anymore, either. The difference for the residents of the US midwest locale of Deerfield in the show's second spin: their path no longer simply involves pieces of cardboard that claim to know where the bearer should be expending their energy, but also spans new animated videos that transform their inner thoughts and hopes into 32-bit clips. Some snippets link to memories dating back decades. Some present alternative futures. Each ushers in a new wave of contemplation — because the focus of The Big Door Prize is how high-school teacher Dusty (Chris O'Dowd, Slumberland) and his neighbours react to the clairvoyant contraption and the information that it imparts.
When the machine first made its presence known, Irishman-in-America Dusty was cynical. Initially, he held back as everyone clamoured for their business card-sized fortune. When he finally relented, he was unimpressed with the results: "teacher/whistler", the gizmo decreed about his destiny. Now, in a place where the Morpho remains the number-one talking point, he's taking the same route as everyone else in his community. As his wife Cass (Gabrielle Dennis, The Upshaws) and daughter Trina (Djouliet Amara, Fitting In) both are, Dusty has given in to letting the Morpho steer his decisions. Another question that The Big Door Prize poses: if being guided in the right direction was as straightforward as putting a quarter into a console, could you resist?
Whether Dusty is making moves that'll impact his marriage, or his restaurant-owning best friend Giorgio (Josh Segarra, The Other Two) is leaping into a new relationship with Cass' best friend Nat (Mary Holland, The Afterparty), uncomplicated happiness rarely follows in this astute show. So when Dusty and Cass deem the Morpho's visions, as the townsfolk dub them, a sign that they need some space to stop being stuck in a rut, it isn't the move they think it will be. As their friends and acquaintances also hold up the Morpho up as a source of wisdom, the same keeps proving true. Trina's relationship with Jacob (first-timer Sammy Fourlas), the twin brother of her deceased boyfriend; Jacob's own efforts to grapple with loss and being without his sibling; his widowed father Beau (Aaron Roman Weiner, Power Book III: Raising Kanan) exploring echoes from his childhood; Cass' mum and Deerfield mayor Izzy (Crystal Fox, The Haves and Have Nots) working through her relationships: they all chart the same course.
The Big Door Prize's tech element could fuel a Black Mirror instalment. In fact, The Big Door Prize is as concerned with what humanity does with the inventions that we create to better our existence as Charlie Brooker is. But bleakness never swirls through the mood here. Rather, this is a curious and empathetic series. While season two of the David West Read (Schitt's Creek)-developed show still treats its magical machine as a puzzle for characters and viewers to attempt to solve — and, especially through bartender Hana (Ally Maki, Shortcomings) and local priest Father Reuben (Damon Gupton, Your Honor), still ponders why the Morpho exists, how it knows what it knows and where it comes from — it firmly digs deeper into the quest for answers that we all undertake while gleaning deep down that there's no such thing as a simple meaning of life.
In season two as in season one, it's no wonder that The Big Door Prize keeps feeling like staring in a mirror, then — and that it keeps constantly intriguing as well. When Dusty and company each return to the apparatus that holds such sway, they're greeted by a message: "are you ready for the next stage?". The show's audience may as well be asked the same. After 2023's episodes established The Big Door Prize's characters — and with Mr Johnson (Patrick Kerr, Search Party), who owns the store where the Morpho materialises, also among the main figures, there's no shortage of them — 2024's revisit can examine why they respond to the promise of knowing their life's purpose as they do. Not in its style of humour, but in its portrait of a town's eclectic residents, there's a Parks and Recreation, The Simpsons and, yes, Schitt's Creek vibe as the show unlocks another level of potential.
It also helps that The Big Door Prize is extremely well-cast, starting with being well-led by O'Dowd. He isn't new to portraying a state of arrested development — going back to The IT Crowd, his resume is built upon it — but he turns in as sincere a performance as he ever has as someone beginning to confront the term. Everyone in Deerfield was cocooned in their routines, sometimes contentedly and sometimes not, before the Morpho appeared. Now, whether sporting oversized personalities (Segarra still steals every scene he's in) or as naturalistic as characters come (Amara, Fourlas, Maki and Gupton fall into that category), they're all fluttering towards finding light in their lives. The Big Door Prize knows that the story is in the journey, crucially — and if it continues flying, viewers will want to stay along for the ride.
The Big Door Prize streams via Apple TV+. Read our review of season one, and our interview with Chris O'Dowd and Josh Segarra about season two.