Roar (2022 TV series)

Roar is an American anthology television series from Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, the creators of GLOW. Based on the 2018 short story collection of the same name by Cecelia Ahern, the 8-episode series premiered on Apple TV+ on April 15, 2022.

Roar
Genre	Anthology Black comedy Drama
Created by	Liz Flahive Carly Mensch
Based on	Roar by Cecelia Ahern
Composer	Isobel Waller-Bridge
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of episodes	8
Production
Executive producers	Liz Flahive Carly Mensch Nicole Kidman Per Saari Bruna Papandrea Steve Hutensky Allie Goss Cecelia Ahern Theresa Park Jodi Matterson Issa Rae
Producers	Leanne Moore Barbara Gibbs
Cinematography	Chris Manley Sam Chiplin Quyen Tran
Editors	Joseph Ettinger William Turro Tyler L. Cook
Running time	29–37 minutes
Production companies	Blossom Films Made Up Stories Greenlight Go Productions Per Capita Productions Endeavor Content
Original release
Network	Apple TV+
Release	April 15, 2022 (2022-04-15)

Premise

Each story in the collection is about womens’ experiences and how women navigate through others' perceptions of them as well as their own. Highlighting what it means to be a woman, these stories are considered "darkly comic feminist fables."^[1]

Production

Development

Roar was announced in August 2018, with the news that GLOW creators Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch were showrunning the TV series being developed based on Cecelia Ahern's short story collection Roar, published in the UK in November 2018 and in the US in April 2019. The project would be produced by Nicole Kidman and Per Saari's Blossom Films, Bruna Papandrea's Made Up Stories, and Theresa Park. Additionally, Ahern's Greenlight Go Productions and Endeavor Content were also attached to produce.^[2]

On March 2, 2021, it was announced that the show will air on Apple TV+ as eight 30-minute episodes each told from a female point of view, which mark Flahive’s and Mensch's first project under their new overall deal with the streamer.^[3]

Casting

The casting of Nicole Kidman, Cynthia Erivo, Merritt Wever, and Alison Brie was announced on March 2, 2021.^[3] In August 2021, Betty Gilpin, Meera Syal, Fivel Stewart, and Kara Hayward joined the cast.^[4]

Filming

Production for Roar began in Los Angeles, California on May 28, 2021, and concluded on August 1, 2021.^[5] So Yong Kim, Rashida Jones, Quyen Tran and Anya Adams directed episodes of the series.^[6]

Episodes

No.	Title	Directed by	Written by	Original release date
1	"The Woman Who Disappeared"	Channing Godfrey Peoples	Teleplay by : Janine Nabers	April 15, 2022 (2022-04-15)
Cast :  Issa Rae, Griffin Matthews, Lauren E. Banks, Nick Kroll
2	"The Woman Who Ate Photographs"	Kim Gehrig	Liz Flahive	April 15, 2022 (2022-04-15)
Cast :  Nicole Kidman, Judy Davis, Simon Baker
3	"The Woman Who Was Kept on a Shelf"	So Yong Kim	Liz Flahive & Carly Mensch	April 15, 2022 (2022-04-15)
Cast :  Betty Gilpin, Daniel Dae Kim
4	"The Woman Who Found Bite Marks on Her Skin"	Rashida Jones	Liz Flahive & Carly Mensch	April 15, 2022 (2022-04-15)
Cast :  Cynthia Erivo, Jake Johnson, P. J. Byrne, Taylor Nichols
5	"The Woman Who Was Fed By a Duck"	Liz Flahive	Teleplay by : Halley Feiffer	April 15, 2022 (2022-04-15)
Cast :  Merritt Wever, Justin Kirk, Riki Lindhome, Jason Mantzoukas
6	"The Woman Who Solved Her Own Murder"	Anya Adams	Liz Flahive & Carly Mensch	April 15, 2022 (2022-04-15)
Cast :  Alison Brie, Hugh Dancy, Christopher Lowell, Ego Nwodim, Jillian Bell
7	"The Woman Who Returned Her Husband"	Quyen Tran	Teleplay by : Vera Santamaria	April 15, 2022 (2022-04-15)
Cast :  Meera Syal, Bernard White, Julie White, Peter Facinelli, Rizwan Manji
8	"The Girl Who Loved Horses"	So Yong Kim	Carly Mensch	April 15, 2022 (2022-04-15)
Cast :  Fivel Stewart, Kara Hayward, Alfred Molina

Release

All 8 episodes of Roar were released on April 15, 2022.^[7]

Reception

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 71% approval rating with an average rating of 6.3/10, based on 31 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "The feminist themes of Roar don't carry smoothly across some installments, but the sheer amount of talent on hand comes through loud and clear."^[8] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 57 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".^[9]

Controversy

In May 2022, the British TV show Gogglebox featured a scene from the fifth episode "The Woman Who Was Fed By a Duck" wherein the duck performs a sex act on the woman. The broadcast of this scene resulted in over 200 complaints to the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom.^[10]