SERIES PREMIERE: In my latest book, 2016’s The Platinum Age of Television, in the chapter charting the evolution of TV talk shows, I concluded by suggesting that the future of talk shows might be to re-fashion them in smaller, self-contained mini-programs, as by taking the “Carpool Karaoke” segments from James Cordon’s The Late Late Show, which have amassed hundreds of millions of views when isolated on YouTube, and building a show around them alone. That idea, apparently, was so last year – because this year, today, that’s exactly what’s happening in real life. Specifically, on Apple Music, which is launching a 20-episode spinoff today with a James Corden-Will Smith carpool sing-along that ends up being a helicopterpool sing-along (pictured) as well. Corden will appear in only a couple of the Apple Music installments of Carpool Karaoke: The Series, but he’s a co-executive producer of all of them, and the emphasis is on booking “riders” with potential chemistry, from long-time buddies Alicia Keys and John Legend to odd-couple pairings such as Blake Shelton and Chelsea Handler. Already, it sounds better than the last time a talk-show segment was spun off into its own show, when NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon begat Spike TV’s Lip Sync Battle.