Binge-r #232: The One + Beforeigners
Tainted Love: Hannah Ware (Rebecca Webb) in The One
THE ONE
Streaming Service: Netflix
Availability: All eight episodes now streaming
Netflix has a flourishing sub-genre of day after tomorrow science-fiction: dramas with a familiar world placed on a new path by a breakthrough technology, such as Ad Vitam [full review here]. At first glance this London-set series appears similar, a contemporary setting where a scientific discovery has allowed genetic testing to genuinely match people with their true love. One of the scientists, Rebecca Webb (Hannah Ware), is now a CEO whose burgeoning company, The One, is revolutionising relationships and, initially at least, driving up the divorce rate as people start to abandon their former lives for the guarantee of a soulmate. “We deserve the fairy-tale,” the confident Rebecca tells an audience in the opening scenes, which should be a clue – along with the intercutting to a body long in the Thames River being discovered – that something is very wrong.
But about 30 minutes into the show, which was adapted by Harold Overman (Misfits, Crazyhead) from the John Marrs novel, you realise that many of the questions you expected to be key mysteries have already been answered: the skeleton, for example, is Ben (Amir El-Masry), Rebecca’s hopeful flatmate, who we see in flashbacks to two years prior when she and a former colleague, James (Dimitri Leonidas), were cracking the code, and breaking some laws. The mystery here is what success has done to Rebecca, who has the zealous drive of a tech mogul who’ll do anything to protect her creation. There are strains of The Social Network, David Fincher’s pungent creation myth for Facebook, to the zippy narrative.
The show is also very good at curling out the complications in Rebecca’s technology. As you start wondering about its flaws – what if you’re matched with a convicted criminal? – the supporting cast are living them out. One of the police detectives belatedly investigating Ben’s death, Kate (Zoe Tapper), has just been matched with a Spanish woman who plans to come to London to visit her, while the paranoia that can accompany the knowledge that “the one” is out there – and it’s not who you’re with – is manifested in a couple that includes a journalist profiling Rebecca, Mark (Eric Kofi-Abrefa), who’ve promised each other that they won’t get tested because they’re happy together. The whole thing is pulpy, but Ware’s Rebecca is a fascinating – and untrustworthy – protagonist, and generally once or twice each early episode a twist upends your expectations. I’m good with that as a holiday from the heavy stuff.
Crime Time: Nicolai Cleve Broch (Lars) and Krista Kosonen (Alfhildr) in Beforeigners
BEFOREIGNERS (SBS on Demand, all six episodes now streaming): Like Alien Nation and District 9 before it, HBO Europe’s first Norwegian-language production uses a science-fiction allegory to examine contemporary migration and racism. Around the world an unknown phenomenon is nightly bringing people from the past – in Norway’s case the Stone Age, Viking era, and the 1800s – into the present day. Classed as “Arrivals”, these refugees don’t so much fit into society as attach themselves to it, with clashes, cultural quirks and tight knit enclaves that defy bureaucratic initiatives and positive official language. When a “Beforeigner” is found dead hours after arriving, a wayward police detective, Lars Haaland (Nicolai Cleve Broch), is partnered with the first Viking police officer, Alfhildr Enginnsdottir (Krista Kosonen), a shield maiden who bring a warrior’s spirit and her own trauma to the case. Their investigation soon finds a trans-temporal conspiracy, but the plotting is peppered with fascinating flourishes, from Lars and his teenage daughter having to deal with his former wife and her conservative new 250-year-old husband, to a Stone Age crime boss explaining the party at his home: “wife has won glory for blogging”.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: Olivia Wilde’s vibrant directorial debut, Booksmart (2019, 105 minutes) is the coming of age movie as teenage riot with Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein as high school besties on a blow out full of antics and affirmation; Framing John DeLorean (2019, 109 minutes) is a fourth wall-breaking mix of archival documentary and dramatic recreation – hello Alec Baldwin – about the 1970s auto mogul whose downfall led a to massive scandal.
New on Stan: One of the best films of last year, Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow (2020, 85 minutes) is mordant pandemic tale, a slow drip existential horror film with fierce formal technique and an exemplary cast; Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020, 92 minutes) is a genial middle-aged return to the time travel and guitar riffs of Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter’s awesome youth that does just enough to honour the original comedies.
New on SBS on Demand: Elevated by a Juliette Binoche performance that takes it from hidden identity thriller to a morality-tinged drama of delicious deceit, Safy Nebbou’s Who You Think I Am (2018, 98 minutes) follows Binoche’s divorced literature professor, who is seduced by online machinations after she’s burned by the dating scene.
>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to catch up on SBS on Demand’s ambitious post-WWII drama Shadowplay and Amazon’s sci-fi success The Expanse.
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