The One (2021)

The One treads the thin line between good and bad television – both of which can be completely absorbing.

The One takes an enticing idea --what would happen if everyone could be romantically paired with their perfect match by DNA? -- and squanders that by turning it into a mundane mystery. It's not bad, as Netflix's British binges go, but nor does the eight-episode run foster much of a love connection.

Most of this first season is devoted to a murder investigation — a very drawn-out, repetitive and not at all mysterious murder investigation. It’s all dramatized and acted competently enough to hold your attention, but jeez, shouldn’t machine-enabled love be the focus here?

The murder plot just seemed to distract from the juicy stuff. I wanted more about how the matches work — the material that is here on that topic is good — and less about Rebecca and her history.

You’d think “The One” would have all sorts of places to go, and yet it goes to few of them. Instead the show revolves around a murder that’s neither mysterious or terribly plausible.

“The One” has no shortage of hiss-worthy villains and conflicted anti-heroes trying to do the right thing even as they’re pulled this way and that, but precious little time is spent on what happens to couples after they’ve been matched for life. Do they ever break up, does the passion ever subside, do they remain in a state of movie-like bliss? Instead, the focus is on the convoluted and largely unsatisfying crime mysteries, none of them particularly gripping.

To stand out, you need something new to say, or at the very least a new way to tread old ground. The One manages neither, unless you count the way its puts aside all that “What would the introduction via technology of perfect happiness and mind-blowing sex for all and the end of the two greatest drivers of human creativity, progress and despair, do to society?” stuff in favour of giving centre stage to a bog-standard murder mystery.