Solos: What the Must Watch reviewers think

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week Scott Bryan and Hayley Campbell share their thoughts on Solos on Amazon Prime Video.

Morgan Freeman, Anne Hathaway, Anthony Mackie and Helen Mirren are among stars in an anthology series that ponders what it means to be human.

Scott says: “Why aren’t I watching Black Mirror?”

“Black Mirror has killed all anthologies and nearly all shows set in the near future, because any show that feels any way similar makes you wonder “why aren’t I watching Black Mirror?”

"It feels like a lost opportunity. Covid-19 has given us the opportunities to try something new, so I liked the idea of having each of these monologues, yet I watched the Anne Hathaway episode twice and still have no idea what half the episode was about. The plot kept tying itself in knots. The ending made no sense to me, it was genuinely frustrating.

It reflects the frustration I have with Amazon’s content, where it has no cohesion. They seem as if they have spent a lot of money again on an overall wasteful, forgettable format."

Hayley says: “Why do I feel like I’ve seen this show a thousand times?”

“Usually if I don’t like a show I watch more and more episodes to find out why I don’t like it, so I don’t just say it’s rubbish on the radio with no good explanation. With this, I didn't need to go further than the credits of episode one. It’s created by the guy who made Hunters which I hated as a TV show, and I had a huge problem with him blurring the line between fact and fiction around the Holocaust. Not that you can't do that, but you have to make it clear what you're doing and not talk about how this comic book nonsense fantasy is a tribute to the victims of the Holocaust.

"Pre-existing beef aside, Solos is just not that interesting. It’s called Solos because it’s actors doing episodes on their own, telling one story about something technological that’s supposed to make us happy but it doesn’t. It’s broadly about loneliness, and you can find a bunch of interviews with the creator talking about how he was inspired to do this because of lockdown and Covid. But if that is true, why do I feel like I’ve seen this show a thousand times?

It’s definitely inspired by Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone, all of those anthology shows that sometimes, when they’re really good, do stories that somehow get to the heart of something terrifying and human. But I feel like we saw this show already. It was called Soulmates, and it was even on the same streaming platform, and it had a lot of the same ideas.

On top of that, the writing in Solos is awful. It’s full of the kind of lines that might work in a novel, but when it’s an actor actually saying it as dialogue they just make me cringe. I have no idea why such a great cast would have anything to do with this other than Amazon money."

Solos is available now on Amazon Prime Video.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening from BBC Sounds and all other good podcast providers.

This week, the team chat to Lesley Sharp about Before We Die on Channel 4. They also review Domina on Sky Atlantic.

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