Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Soulmates’ On AMC, An Anthology About People Matched Up By A Biological Test

If you’ve gotten together with your spouse or significant other over the past 20 years, there’s a good chance that you were matched up by an online dating service that purported to match people based on some nebulous compatibility score. But, the anthology series Soulmates posits this question: What if a scientific test led to a genetic soulmate match? Would you turn your life upside down to meet this person? Read on for more…

SOULMATES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A commercial for Soul Connex, a service that will match you to your soulmate through a test that identifies your “soul gene,” which was identified in 2023.

The Gist: Soulmates is an anthology series, set in the near future, that tells stories about couples affected by this “test”, whether they were brought together by Connex or they were torn apart by it. In the first episode, “Watershed,” we see Nikki (Sarah Snook, Succession) look at her wedding ring while waiting to take the test. Flash back a few weeks, and we see her and her husband Franklin (Kingsley Ben-Adir) groggily waking up as one of their two children are screaming.

Nikki and Franklin have been married for fifteen years, and while Franklin thinks their marriage couldn’t be stronger, Nikki isn’t as sure. She’s rocked when her neighbor Jennifer (Dolly Wells) tells her she’s going to take the test, despite being married for 18 years. She just thinks she missed out on something, and wants to find out if she’s right. Nikki, for her part, seems to be content, but starts to feel that things haven’t felt complete for a long time.

That feeling comes home to roost when she attends the wedding of her brother Peter (Darren Boyd), an immature player nearing 50, to his Connex match Rose (Anna Wilson-Jones), whom he only met a few weeks prior. At a dinner party, he and Rose talked about how she broke off a long-term relationship to be with him, almost sight unseen, just because of the test, and the fact that their love was “undeniable.” And while Nikki makes fun of it with Franklin when they get home, she starts wondering if she should do it.

Nikki sees couples matched up by the test being happy, including her brother, who sticks with the relationship with Rose despite getting in fights. It doesn’t take long for her to wonder if couples like her and Franklin, who met right after college and seem to still be in love and attracted to each other all these years later, are now considered the “strange” ones because they didn’t take the test. Her doubts put a complete strain on their marriage, causing tiffs and fights, where it gets to the point where she sits down for the test, especially after she sees Jen with her match, seemingly happy.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Soulmates sort of feels like Black Mirror, if the whole series were about an eHarmony-like service.

Our Take: We watched the first two episodes of Soulmates, created by William Bridges and Brett Goldstein, and the they couldn’t have been any more different than each other. The first episode, described above, is a pretty straightforward story about a seemingly happy marriage torn apart by doubts sown by this newfangled soulmate test that is sweeping the world.

The second episode, starring David Costabile and Sonya Cassidy, involves a college professor who did the test but hid his profile after meeting his future well-connected wife. When a woman comes to him saying that they matched, he becomes attracted to her and they have an affair. But he soon finds out that this woman isn’t what she presents herself to be. This one felt more Black Mirror-esque, with twists and turns in the story as the professor’s past is dredged up and the reasons why he was set up are revealed.

But, to be honest, we enjoyed the first, more relationship-focused episode a whole lot more than the second, more conspiracy-focused one. It could be because Snook put on an acting showcase during multiple monologues (boy, do we miss Succession right about now) but it also truly made us feel feelings, mainly feeling bad for poor Franklin. There’s a scene where, during a play put on by his daughters and niece, Nikki notices a little tear coming out of the corner of Franklin’s eye, and that’s the moment we knew that he thought he was losing her. The final scene, which we won’t discuss here, is a complete crusher, showing how this test will ruin more relationships than it creates, just by sowing the same doubt it sowed in Nikki.

Those are the types of episodes where Soulmates shines. The more conspiracy-oriented, twisty-turny ones, the ones that try to be like Black Mirror, don’t work nearly as well. The ending of the second episode came out of left field, and even the twists felt somewhat predictable as the episode went along. There’s more than enough story fodder to make episodes about the creepiness of this test and how quickly people are willing to tear apart their lives just because they think the test knows all. There’s no need to vary things by immediately showing us stories where people use the test to commit crimes.

Sex and Skin: There’s sex in both episodes, but it’s never really shown and everyone keeps their clothes on.

Parting Shot: At the end of the first episode, Nikki and Franklin have an encounter that leaves both of them sad and wondering if they both made a huge mistake.

Sleeper Star: Darren Boyd is one of those character actors that you’ve seen a million times, playing both Brits and Americans, and he’s been terrific every time he’s been on screen. Here, playing the super-immature Peter, he is goofy, serious, angry, confident, and in love, often during the same scene.

Most Pilot-y Line: Why do all near-future shows indicate it’s the near future with transparent phones, transparent computer monitors and things like the weather displayed on bathroom mirrors and refrigerators? Transparent screens would be annoying to look at against a busy background, and I don’t need the five-day forecast showing on my mirror; that’s what saying “Hey, Google” is for, which feels invasive enough as it is.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Soulmates boasts a ton of great actors putting in fine performances, but you may want to look at the episode descriptions first before plowing forward. There are some that we think will be way more satisfying than others.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Soulmates On AMC.com