After my severe love of Ted Lasso, I learned that one of the stars and writers, Brett Goldstein, had another show premiering on AMC and I was pretty much all in! Add to the fact that Soulmates touted stars such as Sarah Snook and Bill Skarsgaard as part of its cast and I was even more sold. That it was also an anthology made it even more intriguing.
Unfortunately, the finished product left me a little unsatisfied. It wasn’t that the premise of each episode wasn’t interesting, it was just executed in a somewhat boring manner. It was also shot in 4k which just looks so strange to me. I’m sure I’m alone in that, but it still didn’t help me connect with the story. Some of the episodes reminded me of long-winded, but similarly shot BBC productions, although most of these characters were primarily American.
Slow pace and weird filming method aside, the storylines were indeed fairly interesting. Once I caught what was going on in each it did grab my attention but it just felt like it took forever to get somewhere. What I did like was that the episodes didn’t really stick to one genre. Sure, most were drama, but there were some I could classify as horror or thriller and there was even a rom-com thrown in there! The episodes I found most interesting involved a couple who each met their soul mate and ended up forming a four-person open relationship. I feel like if this technology ever existed in the real world, the way they handled the situation would probably be ideal to most already in relationships.
I also really enjoyed the rom-com episode starring Bill Skarsgaard. There were some stakes but the dialogue had me laughing fairly often. Finally, advertised as the craziest episode of the season truly lived up to the hype when a woman who matches with a doctor learns that he’s also a serial killer! He confides his proclivities to her because he is really curious why they matched. There were definitely some fun twists in that episode!
I mean look, overall it was a pretty interesting series, but I don’t know that I’ll be tuning in for its second season unless I see a really stellar cast. Maybe just watch a few if you are a little bit interested. Otherwise, check out Ted Lasso instead.