Netflix’s new science-fiction series The One is tonally incongruous, confusingly edited, and based on a technological conceit so flimsy that a sidelong glance could shatter it like glass. Nonetheless, I rather enjoyed the show. Some explaining may be in order.
Adapted from a novel by John Marrs, The One is equal parts tech dystopia, police procedural, and saga of thwarted love. The setting is the London of five minutes from now, in which scientists Rebecca Webb (Hannah Ware) and James Whiting (Dimitri Leonidas) have been studying pheromonal methylation in fire ant DNA, a subject nearly as impenetrable as Rebecca’s stony exterior. Buried within this esoteric research is a business opportunity of immeasurable value. If, as the pair has come to believe, ants are biologically predestined to form “irresistible bonds” with certain mates, perhaps the principle can be extended to human beings in the form of a genetics-driven dating app. Equipped with venture capital and a DNA database pinched from fellow lab coat Ben Naser (Amir El-Masry), Rebecca and James launch a matchmaking firm with the potential to change romantic relationships forever.
Though a number of subplots pass through The One’s wide orbit, each depends, to an important extent, on the technological premise at the series’s center. Mark Bailey (Eric Kofi-Abrefa), a freelance journalist writing a profile of Rebecca, has recently been matched to a beautiful young woman thanks to the self-defeating curiosity of his wife, who has mailed in a clump of his stray hairs. Kate Saunders (Zoe Tapper), a metropolitan police detective, is investigating a murder in which Rebecca and James may be complicit but is drawn regularly into her own match’s family crises. Most interesting of all is the storyline concerning the romantic intrigues of Rebecca herself. Despite her match to the smoldering Matheus (a very good Albano Jeronimo), Rebecca must feign an attachment to the blandly handsome Ethan (Wilf Scolding) for marketing purposes. In each instance, the resulting quandary is as old as David and Bathsheba: What the show’s characters ought to do is inexorably opposed to what they yearn for on a level so deep it is literally cellular.
Among The One’s more obvious problems is its failure to tell its interlaced stories with any stylistic consistency. A cat-and-mouse thriller while chronicling the police investigation into Rebecca and James, the series shifts to screwball comedy when depicting Mark’s relationship with his wife, Hannah (an annoying Lois Chimimba). Rebecca’s affair with Matheus achieves a still different tone, as do the Social Network-inspired scenes of startup jockeying that punctuate the program’s first few episodes. Exacerbating this disjointedness is the periodic unclarity of the show’s complicated timeline. Perhaps other viewers will effortlessly follow the series’s temporal leaps by observing the evolution of Rebecca’s hairstyle. I, for one, struggled mightily on occasion.
Of far greater concern than these modest flaws, however, is the fact that Rebecca’s and James’s invention is absurd on its face despite its self-evident dramatic usefulness. Desire, in The One’s counterfactual universe, is entirely contingent on genetic happenstance and contains no social component whatsoever. Never mind if one’s match is a toothless methamphetamine addict, a Bernie Bro, or Kim Jong Un. If fate unites such a pair, the sparks will instantly fly. That this thinking is irrecoverably faulty should, of course, be obvious: It’s hard to love someone if you profoundly hate him or her. Nevertheless, The One plows blithely on, insisting with a straight face that “love doesn’t recognize borders, nationality, or race.” Reader, it does. Only a television writer could think otherwise.
Ironically, one of the strong points of Netflix’s series is its willingness, intentionally or not, to undermine its own governing philosophy. Though its characters are frequently under passion’s sway, the show can’t help acknowledging that grown-ups must sometimes act on other priorities. Among the hurdles that block the path of ardor on The One are career ambitions, ethical dilemmas, unprocessed guilt, and a desire not to lie to the police. Genetically dictated love turns out to be every bit as complicated as the old-fashioned version.
Where this tension finds its highest expression is in the pained, intermittent romance shared by Rebecca and Matheus, a coupling so believable and well acted that it almost justifies the series’s existence all by itself. Though the chemistry between performers is a strength throughout the show’s run, Ware and Jeronimo reach another level as lovers who recognize that they are made for one another but can’t quite nail the logistics. Yes, the notion that every human being possesses a single, biologically defined soul mate is ridiculous. But The One’s most compelling connection is nearly enough to make the viewer believe it.
As with any high-concept drama, Netflix’s series may ultimately rise or fall on exactly that question: Do its rules, as presented and explained to the audience, make sufficient sense to permit widespread credulity? If, as seems possible, The One fails by this standard, it may be because the desire to shop around is, in the digital age, largely recognized as an ineradicable part of the human experience. “I was seeing who else was out there,” one character tells another about his recent infidelity. Do all the research you want. No app is going to cure that.
Graham Hillard teaches English and creative writing at Trevecca Nazarene University.
