I'm not certain exactly what is either lacking or unbalanced about this, but something is grating and blocking the desired flow that a viewer needs to pull them into full engagement with the show's premise and characters.
Rebecca, CEO of and driving force behind The One, looks strangely younger in the present time than she does in the flashbacks of previous years. There are decidedly more wrinkles on Old Rebecca's face than there are on New Rebecca's. - Perhaps we are supposed to presume her fortune had facilitated a ton of botox and filler injections, I'm not sure.
I'm also not sure what's wrong with this show, but something is off. I don't know if it's the unflattering angle of the characters full-length shots, which make everyone appear short and inelegant, or the direction, or (some) of the performances, or the editing, or the writing, or what, exactly, but there is definitely something that is irritating about its presentation.
Sound-wise, the levels are uneven. We found ourselves constantly reaching for the volume buttons throughout the first 3 episodes - which were frankly a bit of a bore to get through, partly because of this.
Some of the actors speak more softly than others, and their levels have not been equalised to those of the louder performers. When the soundtrack kicks in, it's far too loud in comparison with the dialogue of all the actors, not just the quieter members of the cast.
It should be great entertainment, but something I haven't yet been able to put my finger on is interfering with our enjoyment of it.
Granted, Rebecca is a highly unlikeable character for whom we can muster no sympathy; she has morphed from being an idealistic full-of-dreams scientist into a cold-hearted, lying horror of a woman with her beady eye fixed on The One's profits, and a laboriously signposted and yet to be revealed Big Dark Secret, but we simply don't care why she's turned into this monstrous version of herself.
Rebecca should be concerned that her DNA Matching service has created a huge spike in divorce and break-ups, because clients have bought into her sales spiel of "Don't settle! There's someone out there who is your perfect match - don't you deserve to be your happiest and most fulfilled self? You deserve better!" yet her sole concern is The One's bottom line.
This mercenary attitude has obviously come from The Big Dark Secret she currently harbours, but the show, for whatever reason, fails to engage us sufficiently to pique our interest in the origins of this change of character. Old Rebecca was sweet and idealistic. New Rebecca is a lying, money-grabbing ice-queen. Normally, we would be fascinated to understand the psychology behind her change of heart, but instead we found ourselves unmoved. We watched 3 episodes back-to-back last night, and we're not bothered if we don't watch the rest. We simply don't care about Rebecca.
We also don't care about the pathologically jealous Hannah, who met her husband in the traditional way but is now screwing herself into a total tizzy fit that his "The One" match would be more attractive to him than she is, nor even about the talented Zoe Tapper, whose investigating cop character, Kate, has been matched with a charismatic Spanish woman, Sophia, who mysteriously winds up critically wounded in hospital on the night of their very first face-to-face meeting, and who already apparently has a wife sitting at her ICU bedside. The scene in which an already romantically hooked Kate is confronted by Sophia's furious wife at the hospital is the closest I came to caring about any of the characters, although I did also feel a little bit bad for Hannah's poor husband Mark.
We just don't care enough about the characters to need to watch the other 5 episodes.
The One is an interesting premise, but too badly executed to engage us as viewers.
Rebecca, CEO of and driving force behind The One, looks strangely younger in the present time than she does in the flashbacks of previous years. There are decidedly more wrinkles on Old Rebecca's face than there are on New Rebecca's. - Perhaps we are supposed to presume her fortune had facilitated a ton of botox and filler injections, I'm not sure.
I'm also not sure what's wrong with this show, but something is off. I don't know if it's the unflattering angle of the characters full-length shots, which make everyone appear short and inelegant, or the direction, or (some) of the performances, or the editing, or the writing, or what, exactly, but there is definitely something that is irritating about its presentation.
Sound-wise, the levels are uneven. We found ourselves constantly reaching for the volume buttons throughout the first 3 episodes - which were frankly a bit of a bore to get through, partly because of this.
Some of the actors speak more softly than others, and their levels have not been equalised to those of the louder performers. When the soundtrack kicks in, it's far too loud in comparison with the dialogue of all the actors, not just the quieter members of the cast.
It should be great entertainment, but something I haven't yet been able to put my finger on is interfering with our enjoyment of it.
Granted, Rebecca is a highly unlikeable character for whom we can muster no sympathy; she has morphed from being an idealistic full-of-dreams scientist into a cold-hearted, lying horror of a woman with her beady eye fixed on The One's profits, and a laboriously signposted and yet to be revealed Big Dark Secret, but we simply don't care why she's turned into this monstrous version of herself.
Rebecca should be concerned that her DNA Matching service has created a huge spike in divorce and break-ups, because clients have bought into her sales spiel of "Don't settle! There's someone out there who is your perfect match - don't you deserve to be your happiest and most fulfilled self? You deserve better!" yet her sole concern is The One's bottom line.
This mercenary attitude has obviously come from The Big Dark Secret she currently harbours, but the show, for whatever reason, fails to engage us sufficiently to pique our interest in the origins of this change of character. Old Rebecca was sweet and idealistic. New Rebecca is a lying, money-grabbing ice-queen. Normally, we would be fascinated to understand the psychology behind her change of heart, but instead we found ourselves unmoved. We watched 3 episodes back-to-back last night, and we're not bothered if we don't watch the rest. We simply don't care about Rebecca.
We also don't care about the pathologically jealous Hannah, who met her husband in the traditional way but is now screwing herself into a total tizzy fit that his "The One" match would be more attractive to him than she is, nor even about the talented Zoe Tapper, whose investigating cop character, Kate, has been matched with a charismatic Spanish woman, Sophia, who mysteriously winds up critically wounded in hospital on the night of their very first face-to-face meeting, and who already apparently has a wife sitting at her ICU bedside. The scene in which an already romantically hooked Kate is confronted by Sophia's furious wife at the hospital is the closest I came to caring about any of the characters, although I did also feel a little bit bad for Hannah's poor husband Mark.
We just don't care enough about the characters to need to watch the other 5 episodes.
The One is an interesting premise, but too badly executed to engage us as viewers.
