Before (TV series)

A recently widowed child psychiatrist named Eli meets with his next patient, Noah, who mysteriously shows up at his house and appears to know things about him. The child appears to have psychotic episodes that result in harm to himself or others, but the psychiatrist senses something in these episodes that appear to point to a "source" which the psychiatrist appears to relate to.

It was announced in June 2022 that Apple TV+ had ordered the series, which Billy Crystal would star in and Barry Levinson would direct.^[6] In December 2023, Judith Light joined the cast, with Adam Bernstein now set to direct the pilot episode, as Levinson had to exit the project.^[7] In January 2024, Rosie Perez, Jacobi Jupe, Maria Dizzia, Ava Lalezarzadeh would be added to the main cast, with Hope Davis joining in a recurring capacity.^[8][9]

Filming had begun on the series under the name Winston in New Jersey by May 2023.^[10] In June, it was announced it had entered an indefinite hiatus amidst the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike.^[11] Upon the strike's conclusion, the series resumed filming in December in Moonachie, New Jersey.^[12] It filmed in Hoboken, New Jersey, in January 2024,^[13] and later in Independence Township, New Jersey in March.^[14] The series used de-aging technology from the artificial intelligence studio, Deep Voodoo.^[15]

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 32% approval rating with an average rating of 5.2/10, based on 31 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Starring Billy Crystal playing against type, Before initially intrigues but doesn't bring enough ideas or variety to sustain what comes after."^[16] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 46 out of 100 based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.^[17]

• Bridey Murphy