Apple TV+ Announces ‘Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet’ Comedy Series Coming on Feb. 7

The shows in Apple’s initial Apple TV+ launch lineup have almost wrapped up their first seasons; the last season one episode of See aired earlier this month and the season finales of The Morning Show and For All Mankind are set to drop tomorrow.

Of course, as groundbreaking as some of these initial shows have been — The Morning Show has made history by racking up multiple award nominations after being on the air for less than six weeks — they’re obviously far from the only shows that Apple is working on, and the company has been slowly teasing its upcoming projects to whet people’s appetites with regular and frequent announcements of what viewers can expect in the new year.

Of course, Apple already launched the M. Night Shyamalan thriller Servant on Nov. 28, followed by the Octavia Spencer-led crime drama Truth Be Told on Dec. 6; with weekly episode releases, both of these will run into the new year, and Apple also announced last week that these would be followed by Little America, an anthology series of immigrant stories that’s set to debut with all eight episodes on Jan. 17.

Apple’s Next Comedy Series

Most of Apple’s major efforts so far have been focused on dramatic and documentary style content, with the only notable exception being Dickinson, a quasi-biopic series on the life of Emily Dickinson that while technically a comedy, is slightly darker and more offbeat.

However, we’ve known for a while that Apple has been working on a more traditional sitcom-style comedy, with reports back in 2018 that it had ordered a new series from the duo behind It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Last spring we got confirmation along with a name and teaser for the series when it was announced by producer Ubisoft at the E3 gaming conference: Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet.

The fact that Ubisoft showed it off so early suggested that the series was likely ready to go by the time Apple TV+ launched, and was probably held back by Apple to spread out the content on its new service, but unlike shows like Little America and Little Voice, which were teased by Apple on its press page and in its Apple TV+ launch back in March, the company has remained dead quiet about Mythic Quest — until now.

According to a new press release, Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet will be debuting on Apple TV+ on February 7, with all nine half-hour episodes of the live-action comedy series set to drop on day one. This is similar to the approach that Apple took with Dickinson, which likely makes more sense for a comedy series that won’t otherwise have the dramatic hook to keep users anticipating the next episodes and coming back for more each week.

As previously announced by Ubisoft, the series was created and is being executive produced by Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, who wrote and starred in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, along with The Onion editor and comedy writer Megan Ganz who in addition to Always Sunny is also known for her work on Modern Family and Community. McElhenney will also be starring in the lead role as Ian Grimm, the super-egotistical “visionary” creative director of a game development firm.

The series is expected to be done in a “mockumentary” style that parodies the world of game development, following the team behind “the biggest massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) of all time” as they prepare for their first major expansion.

While Apple hasn’t yet released its own trailer for the series, the trailer shown by Ubisoft in the spring suggests that it’s very typical of McElhenney’s work from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia while adopting the “mockumentary” style of shows like The Office and Modern Family.

McElhenney is also joined by an ensemble cast that includes Academy Award-winner F. Murray Abraham, Danny Pudi, Imani Hakim, Charlotte Nicdao, David Hornsby, Ashly Burch and Jessie Ennis.