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The One is something we all want to find, and in this new drama set, oddly “five minutes in the future”, sees geneticist Rebecca (Hannah Ware – Hitman: Agent 47) having cracked it.
Her company’s system helps you to find ‘the one’ with a perfect chance of happiness – guaranteed. All it takes is a single strand of hair and they’ll find your match within their databased. However, this has a backlash amongst the population from those who’ve since tried to see if their marriages are ‘valid’ by taking the test.
So far I’ve watched just the first two episodes, and the drama switches between the present day and a year back in time to reveal the plot as it goes on, necessitating that time-jump back and forth. But it ain’t all sunshine and rainbows since, as we see at the very start, a body turns up in the river and you’re looking to discover how things are all connected?
Meanwhile, bisexual cop Kate (Zoë Tapper – Liar) – who, by day, is dealing with this case, is about to meet her match, Sophia (Jana Pérez – Holmes And Watson), who’s coming over all the way from Spain. Hence, we see that your DNA match won’t necessarily be from just down your street, but could quite as easily be from the other side of the world (Okay, within Europe, in her case, but you get the idea).
The first thing I realised is that this drama doesn’t initially touch upon the fact that it can only match you via DNA with someone else, as long as they have the DNA of the other person involved, but a short while in and I learned that, simply, not everyone finds their match as a result. Then again, looking at this as if it was a real company in operation today, the number of people using the service seemed to have grown as quickly as Facebook did, so the chances could therefore be that you will find someone roughly within your age group.
So far, I’ve seen the first four episodes, and it’s interesting because I’m drawn to the futuristic aspect of how dating could be, but it’s very slow to get going and hasn’t yet grabbed me in. I will stick with it to see how it goes, though.
One odd thing – this series echoes something I haven’t seen done since I watched a widescreen video of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers: as someone speaks, their voice comes out of the speakers dependent on where they are in the room. For simple dialogue pieces, they normally just sit in the centre channel, so even with that disabled, they would then come out of both front left and right speakers. Here, around halfway through, Rebecca is seen walking around her flat and talking to someone – the camera sometimes switching positions – yet her voice moves around the speakers. It just feels very odd and unnatural. I will say that I’m watching these episodes prior to release, so it is possible that they’re a pre-release verison and that this is corrected by the time of the series’ release.
The One is not available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but is on Netflix from Friday March 12th 2021.
Episode 1 Score: 6.5/10
Episode 2 Score: 6.5/10
Episode 3 Score: 6/10
Episode 4 Score: 6/10
Series Directors: Jeremy Lovering, Catherine Morshead, Brady Hood
Producer: Adam Knopf
Writer: Howard Overman
Music: Ian Arber, Dave Rowntree
Cast:
Rebecca: Hannah Ware
Kate: Zoë Tapper
Damian: Stephen Campbell Moore
Holly: Olivia Chenery
Hannah: Lois Chimimba
Matheus: Albano Jerónimo
Mark: Eric Kofi-Abrefa
James: Dimitri Leonidas
Connor: Diarmaid Murtagh
Sophia: Jana Pérez
Nick: Gregg Chillin
Ethan: Wilf Scolding
Megan: Pallavi Sharda
Fábio: Miguel Amorim
Ben: Amir El-Masry
Charlotte: Simone Kirby
Sebastian: Eduardo Lloveras
Valeria: Paula Muñoz
Lucy: Laura Aikman
Event Manager: Leanne Holder
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.