AppleTV+'s Fizzy, Anachronistic 'Dickinson' is a Wild, Weird Romp

AppleTV+'s new period comedy Dickinson is hardly what you'd call traditional. Despite the fact that it glimmers with all the lushness of a prestige drama, it's tone is anything but. And the thing is, that's precisely what makes it so much fun. The series embraces the anachronistic spirit of films like The Favourite and Marie Antoinette to tell the story of a woman who was vastly ahead of her time - using tropes and twists from outside of her time.

There's modern slang, hip-hop music, drugs, and all manner of things one most certainly does not tend to associate with famous American poet Emily Dickinson, a woman who's largely remembered today for her reclusive lifestyle, and the hundreds of dark, brilliant and confusing poems discovered in a trunk after her death. (Fun fact: She only published 12 in her lifetime.) Yet, the end result is a frothy, funny, bizarre and utterly human tale of an unruly young woman who wanted more than the world was ready to give her.

Dicksinson isn't going to be a show for everyone. Certainly, historical purists will dislike the way the series' plays fast and loose with the actual facts of Dickinson's life, casting the poet as a sort of rebellious hero figure and gleefully making the assumed subtext of her life overtly textual in almost every way. Yet, there's something that feels fresh and exciting about this particular framework - as though imagining Dickinson's life complete with a lesbian love affair and sly winks toward modern-day gender norms have spurred us all to reenage with her life and works in new ways.