Picard: What the Must Watch reviewers think

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows alongside 5 Live presenter Nihal Arthanayake.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan share their thoughts on Picard - Amazon's venture into the Star Trek franchise starring Sir Patrick Stewart. 

It's available now on Amazon Prime Video.

Have you watched it? What did you think? Leave your comments below...

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Scott says: “It’s just a world that I can’t get into”

"Star Trek has been there through my entire life. In terms of Jean Luc Picard, I remember going to cinema after cinema in the early noughties (in Basingstoke) watching film after film. This is something of a sequel to a previous film that was really big, so it picks up, as a franchise, directly where the last film [Star Trek Nemesis] ended in 2002.

"I thought they would introduce a lot of stuff, a bit like they do in Doctor Who, where you can jump in anywhere. With this, though, it’s essentially like having an incredibly intense PowerPoint presentation of the whole Star Trek universe, and I watched it about seven times trying to mind-map it.

"I think we’re at a stage now of ‘peak TV’ where it’s brilliant that shows like this exist as it appeals to such a niche of core fandom. They might not be hugely popular, but it’s faithful.

"If you have an interest in Star Trek and you care about the franchise, I would say this is faithful enough and in that world enough that your interest will be fulfilled. It is immersive within the original world. It’s just a world that I can’t get into to.

"But if you’re not a Star Trek fan, for me it’s not a Must Watch."

Hayley says: “It’s about the long lasting effects of trauma and regret”

"Picard is – I think – 94ish. He’s old. He’s obsessing over his past failures and mourning the death of his best friend. He’s sitting around on a vineyard and thinking about what happened and what could have happened.

"It’s about the long lasting effects of trauma and regret. It’s about, I think, what a lifetime of fighting takes out of you. I think it’s much more interesting to visit a formerly great hero at the end of their life to see what’s going on, when they no longer have the power or machinery or ships to fight, so you get to see more of what is going on inside their head. That’s what this is. He’s sitting around drinking wine and then he kind of gets pulled in for ‘one last job’.

"I’m not a Star Trek fan but my dad’s version of a mid-life crisis was to ignore his life for a few weeks and watch Star Trek – the Original Series from start to finish. I joined him for most of the episodes and developed a weird crush on Leonard Nimoy and that was what I had going in to this. I’ve never watched many of the Star Treks with Captain Picard before but I had a sense of his character because it's such a cultural thing. The fact I didn’t know the details of everything wasn’t that much of an issue.

"It’s written by Michael Chabon, along with some others, who is a Pulitzer prize winning novelist and a massive nerd and he's one of my favourite writers of all time. I know he loves science fiction, he IS a fan, so I would trust this show and expect him to do something meaningful with this character – because he respects it."

Picard is available now on Amazon Prime Video.

Must Watch is available as a podcast every Monday evening from BBC Sounds, or through your podcast app.

In this week's episode the team also review The Windermere Children, and Celebrity Ex on the Beach, plus they speak to Joey Essex and the stars of The Stranger.

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