The Mandalorian: What the Must Watch reviewers think

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

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan share their thoughts on The Mandalorian, the Star Wars spin-off show that is set after The Return of the Jedi but before the latest film trilogy.

It’s been described as a spaghetti western set in space.

The Mandalorian is available now on Disney+ with new episodes released every Friday.

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

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Scott says: “The charm of Star Wars is its accessibility"

“It takes a little while to get into it, it does a lot of stuff that goes deep into the Star Wars universe and references to the backstories and has links to other parts within the franchise that I think results in it being not as accessible as starting with any of the usual films.

“There’s some fantastic sequences that really capture you and it is a film-level of quality, which feels really exciting, but a lot of the dialogue for me is people going 'blah blah blah.’ This is not meant to be a real spoiler because it would be if not for the fact that the show was out in November, but the draw for me is the introduction of the Baby Yoda, the meme that has been all over the internet, a character that no one anticipated, an icon that was not used in any of the pre-publicity material for the show.

“This series is essentially a buddy comedy and a buddy action film between these two different characters. Most of the time you’re seeing Baby Yoda and your reaction is ’oh, it's so cute’ and that’s about it.

“We were looking at the latest Star Trek series and to outsiders it was completely incomprehensible whereas this series does realise that they’re catering to a wider audience."

Hayley says: “It feels like vintage Star Wars – there are rubber masks and you can see people’s eyes"

"I’m not a big Star Wars fan but I don’t think you don’t need to be a huge Star Wars nerd to get into this. Star Wars is so much part of global consciousness that you kind of know the gist of it without getting everything. I don’t think this was ever meant to completely stand alone, part of its charm is how fannish it is, it is definitely made by people who love Star Wars. So you can watch it without it but I think you’ll be missing a lot of the references and the deep nerdery that’s embedded in the whole thing.

"Knowing what comes after this gives it so much more meaning, like knowing who Yoda is and what he means to everything makes this weird buddy cop film much more interesting. Without knowing all the Star Wars stuff this could be a bunch of strange looking characters getting into gun fights and riding bizarre animals across alien planets which at this point I think is a fun distraction and I think the Mandalorian is different enough from the original source material that it doesn’t just feel like an appendage. It's strange, it’s got this spaghetti western feel to it and it sets it apart and it has Werner Herzog in it and Carl Weathers, so, you know, I think you can come at this from lots of different angles and it will be a Must Watch.

"What I also loved about this, it feels like vintage Star Wars in the sense that there are lots of rubber masks and you can still see people's human eyes and human mouths and it’s just rubber outfits, I love stuff like that."

The Mandalorian is available on Disney+ and new episodes are released every Friday.

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

This week the team also review The Nest on BBC One (and interview actor Martin Compston). Plus they talk about Channel 4's new animated comedy, Duncanville.

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