When the cast of a show boasts of Steve Carrell, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, there’s no way we can miss it. Each actor is an icon in their own right and to see them come together for a series dealing with the #MeToo aftermath could turn out as either riveting or revolting. Luckily for us and all others involved in the production, the show is an I-can’t-stop-watching success.

One of Apple TV’s first major offering, The Morning Show is said to be heavily adapted from Brian Stelter’s 2013 nonfiction book, Top of the Morning, but written to include the #MeToo arc. The series follows an American news network trying to stay afloat in the digital age with declining viewership, internal politics and a larger than life sexual harassment scandal that threatens to derail the entire network in its wake.

The show starts slowly and in the first couple of episodes tends to meander a bit. The conflict between the original plot and the superimposed #MeToo scandal shows initially; Reese Witherspoon’s entry into the Morning Show sphere and her consequent hesitation don’t make for the most fascinating first three episodes but what does save the plot is the conversation it starts about the global harassment movement.

Carrell, like good books, wine and cheese, just seems to get better with age. He stars as Mitch Kessler, the network’s golden boy who can do no wrong as he continues to test positive with audiences and embodies his fall from fame and grace so convincingly that it’s hard to imagine he’s the same goofy actor who played The Office’s Michael Scott.

There’s a particular sequence in the first episode the morning after news of his sexual misconduct allegation breaks and he is consequently fired from the show; the rage, the shock and the denial punctuated by shouts of “it was consensual” and “I didn’t rape anybody” make you squirm as you watch them. You see Carrell’s character struggling to understand how behavior that was rampant, overlooked and mostly accepted as part of the business has suddenly cost him his life and legacy.

This was perhaps the most interesting angle that the show explored. Sure there’s the regular tussle for power among top level executives, mutinous moves and disloyalty on display but what the show really manages to capture is how murky the entire #MeToo movement is/has been. There’s a moment when Witherspoon character Bradley Jackson asks Anniston Alex Levy whether she was aware of her co-hosts extracurricular activities and Aniston scathingly asks her to never question her integrity about her “house” ever. This convenient denial of Carrell’s activities forms one of the main contentions and running theme of the show.

It aptly makes you question who all should be held responsible. Kessler definitely gets what had been long coming, his years of abuse catch up to him but for a man who has spent his entire life getting away scot-free from any misdemeanor, it is a rude awakening. The episodes show how he deals with the verdict; he’s drinking one evening with a friend, a once celebrated but recently disgraced Hollywood director who makes light of sleeping with a 15 year old girl and it seems to dawn on Kessler that he’s sharing the same space as pedophiles and rapists.

There is a lot of mention of controlling the narrative. Each twist in the plot follows the idea that the news will come out but the way it does and who tells it makes all the difference. From interviewing one of the victims of Kessler on the Morning Show to the announcement of Jackson joining the show as co-host, it’s a game of one upping the other at the cost of human life and dignity.

The Morning Show also explores the dynamic between two strong women at the helm; while the relationship between Jackson and Levy is far from catty, the show pits them against each other in the capacity of feminist tone shift vs the old guard. There’s a telling moment in the later episodes where after months of denial Levy loses her cool and tells Jackson to stop being so idealistic and believing that she can help in holding those who turned a blind eye to this behavior accountable because the behavior she wants to call out isn’t just widespread but everyone is complicit in it.

What The Morning Show handles really well is balance. Dealing with #MeToo allegations is not cut and dry, it’s murky, it pits intention versus action, silence versus complicity and most of all, it shows a dysfunctional cycle of power that drags victims, perpetrators and those on the sidelines with no discrimination. The series doesn’t paint too many as black and white characters. In fact, with the exclusion of Fred, the head of the network and the consolidator of power, the show manages to portray shades of grey in each character, making them human and relatable.

That said, Witherspoon’s Jackson can be a little annoying to watch. The streak of self-sabotage comes across as forced at points and in certain sequences showing network politics, the show drags. However, the plot, acting and editing gets strong as it progresses, building the tension to a crescendo by the 9th episode.

The Morning Show would have probably fallen in the same trap as Newsroom but the exploration of the Time’s Up movement elevates it from another run of the mill production with a star studded cast to something that is worth taking time out for.