Must Watch reviews: Pluribus, Malice and All Her Fault

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

This week, Scott Bryan and Hayley Campbell review ‘Pluribus’, ‘Malice’ and ‘All Her Fault’.

What do the Must Watch reviewers make of them?

From the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul - Pluribus sees Vince Gilligan turn his hand to science-fiction. Rhea Seehorn stars as a cynical writer who discovers she’s one of a handful of people left on earth immune to an extraterrestrial virus which makes people permanently happy.

Scott “absolutely adored this,” and said this is one of his “favourite shows of this year so far”.

“When you see sci-fi, end of the world style shows, they always fit a convention. This is dystopian, yet has an incredibly happy super society where everyone's incredibly helpful and charming and have basically been replaced by AI. I haven't seen that before.”

“It's got this amazing central character who is flawed and is incredibly cynical and now has to feel the weight of the whole world on her shoulders, trying to save humankind, and she just can't be bothered, but she's now having to.”

“The cinematography is just utterly fantastic. There are so many scenes in this that I just think are captivating. There's a scene in the opening episode where Carol was just behind the scene of a car and she's driving her way through this kind of post-apocalyptic yet happy place and you're just seeing varying scenes of kind of destruction take place behind her and it's a single shot. It was utterly mesmerising.”

Hayley said she loved “the specifics of the main character”.

“She's a writer of trashy romantasy novels, and in the first scene where we meet her, she's giving a reading and a signing in a chain book shop. The whole scene clearly comes from someone who has obviously lived or been near the world of fandom.”

“I also loved her anger and how much she hates her work, her fans and probably herself. She's the perfect character for the rest of the world to now be her contrast because it's like this whole infection thing is like zombies but instead of spreading death, they're spreading happiness.”

“What I liked most about this show is its ideas. In the second episode we see her meet up with some of the other people who were somehow unaffected by this and none of them seem to think it's a problem. I love that because they think the world is better for them now. That is totally unusual for a story like this, but I think it is probably more true to life.”

Scott and Hayley both agreed that Pluribus is a Must Watch.

The first five episodes of Pluribus is available to watch on Apple TV. The next episode will be released on December 3rd.

This is a psychological thriller starring Jack Whitehall as a male nanny who joins a wealthy family on a Greek island holiday, with David Duchovny and Carice van Houten also in the cast.

Scott says he “just didn’t get this one”.

“After a while, I just really stopped caring because I've seen so many shows over the course of the last year, of people who are not very nice, all having their comeuppance. Now, either it's because of their entitlement, or because of how much money they've got and how much power they have, and it's all about them being miserable.”

“The bigger problem though, is that there is absolutely no sense of suspense. I never felt on the edge of my seat and there was never any sense of foreboding. It was just a complete waste really.”

“This show literally was so flat from the opening scene, about five minutes in I was like, oh, how much longer? Which is not how it's supposed to be.”

Hayley agreed with Scott and said “Malice is just not very good”.

“This isn't a Must Watch for me. It's a bit like a low rent White Lotus in both its subject and its format.”

“How much you like this show will probably depend on how annoying you think Jack Whitehall is. I'm not a fan and nothing he does in this convinces me that I've been missing out on anything. I actually found him so irritating in this that he cancelled out the fact that David Duchovny is in it. And I love David Duchovny.”

“It's one of those shows where you can imagine everyone signed up because it meant they'd have a nice holiday on a lovely Greek island.”

“If you start this and you don't like it, please remember that you can watch the entirety of The X-Files on Disney Plus and also Californication is on Paramount Plus. That way you're still getting your fix of David Duchovny.”

Scott and Hayley both agreed this was not a Must Watch.

All episodes of Malice are available on Amazon Prime Video.

This is a thriller based on Andrea Mara’s novel, starring Sarah Snook from Succession and Dakota Fanning. The drama follows the disappearance of a child named Miles and explores family tensions and suspicions.

Scott said this one was an “easy job” because he gave it as a Must Watch recommendation last week.

Hayley says she “loves this because its premise is so simple”.

“A rich kid's family is abducted. So how do you make that stand out? You get Sarah Snook to lead it. And I love Sarah Snook, partly because she's a great actor. We all loved her as Shiv in Succession, but also she's not messing with her face. She has a real human face that moves in a real human way and this is such a rare thing in TV at the moment and I just love it.”

“Also, it's kind of a traditional whodunit. At some point, you will have suspected every single character of doing the crime.”

“What I think stands out most to me is in the writing about the division of labour within a marriage. You see so much of the imbalance of what women are expected to do and how much their husbands don't do. I thought that was really well done and kind of hidden, it was like embedded in this story about an abduction.”

“It's also a great basic thriller, but I think it's such an observant comment on so many relationships between men and women.”

Scott and Hayley both agree this one’s a Must Watch.

All episodes available on Sky/Now TV now.

Listen to the full reviews of all three programmes on BBC Sounds.

But before all that, why not contact Scott and Hayley with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or both on [email protected].

We used AI to transcribe and summarise our Must Watch feature. This article was then written and reviewed by a BBC journalist. More on how the BBC uses AI.