Stream It Or Skip It: ‘At The Moment’ On Netflix, An Anthology Series About Love During The Pandemic

For some reason or another, TV writers still haven’t figured out how to portray the pandemic. It’s hard to portray the isolation we all felt, or how strange everything was, without bringing those feelings right back to what happened three-and-a-half years ago, when we all locked down. A new anthology series from Taiwan tries to capture these feelings, with a number of love stories using the pandemic as a background.

AT THE MOMENT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of Taipei, and a voice from a TV news report saying there are zero current cases of COVID-19 and no domestic cases in 50 days. People walk around the city wearing masks. A graphic says “JUNE, 2020.”

The Gist: At The Moment is a ten-part anthology series that examines different stories of love and loss that take place in Taiwan during the heart of the pandemic.

In the first story, “Reality Dating Show,” we see Chang Yung (Berant Zhu), who works at a cafe, grabbing a couple of bags for a delivery. At the same time, Hsia Wei-ting (Gingle Wang) is in a studio, auditioning for a reality show by playing a song on her guitar. Yung shows up with the delivery and the two have a moment. The show’s producer looks at him and asks him to take off his mask, as he seems to be just the type to be on her show. He just delivers the coffee and moves on, but when he sees that Wei-ting’s mask is broken, he offers her his spare.

Wei-ting thinks the reality show, New Tenants, is just the opportunity to boost her acting and presenting career. Her boyfriend, who is in Melbourne, is frustrated that she’d go on such a show, but she feels this is a performance, just like any other gig.

At the New Tenants apartment, Wei-ting meets designer Chiang Chun-to (Yom Chang), banker Chiao Kuo-sen (JC Lin), who calls himself Joe, and dancer Hsu Tzu-yin (Daisy Hsu), who calls herself Yin-yin. They all get along great during the first week, and Chun-to asks Wei-ting out on a date. The date seems to go well, until the director yells “cut”, then she gets on her phone and treats Chun-to like a colleague instead of a date.

A fifth roommate is supposed to move in, and Wei-ting is surprised to see that it’s Chang Yung. The two of them find themselves bonding off-camera, at a convenience store near the apartment. They have a lot in common, including music. But Wei-ting is still playing along with the show, pretending to fall for Chun-to. At the same time, Yin-yin is taking a liking to Yung. He goes along with it, and becomes popular because of it, until Yin-yin decides to tell him how she feels.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Think of the various iterations of Modern Love, except with the pandemic as a backdrop.

Our Take: It’s hard to judge the entire season of At The Moment off one episode, especially because the episodes are all directed by different people. But what we can talk about is having the pandemic as a backdrop during all of them. Like with most shows that have the pandemic as part of its story, there’s a bit of inconsistency in how it’s portrayed. But even more disconcerting is why it even needs to be a part of the show in the first place.

The story of the first episode is fun, showing just how unreal things on a reality show can be. But we also knew where it was going to go, as soon as Yung and Wei-ting saw each other during the audition. Still, it was interesting to see how things took a turn when Yung decided to not “play along” with the given storyline, and how it created a whole new storyline that was better. Also, the two lovebirds’ 7-Eleven meetups were a nice way to show them away from the cameras.

The idea behind the pandemic backdrop is that the people in these love stories are going to be affected by the isolation the lockdowns caused. There seems to be some of that evidence in place here, but given the timeframe of June, 2020, things don’t seem to be all that different from pre-pandemic times, or even the current post-pandemic period. The only difference is that more people are wearing masks.

Of course, like most shows, the usage of those masks is inconsistent. It feels like the people on the show were eating or drinking most of the time as an excuse to let the actors take off their masks. Maybe that represents where most people were at that time, but the donning and doffing of masks was more distracting than illustrative, and seemed to be more window dressing than anything else.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: On his way out of the apartment, Joe gets a text from an acquaintance who has been watching the drama on TV. So at least he found what he wanted.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to JC Lin as Joe, because he seemed to be on the outside of all the drama, and we would have liked to see more about his character if there was more time.

Most Pilot-y Line: Wei-ting’s boyfriend doesn’t really come into play after the scene where he FaceTimes from Melbourne. We’re not even sure what connection that part of the story had to the rest of it.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you can get past the distracting pandemic part of each story, At The Moment should give viewers some entertaining, albeit light, love stories to watch.

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.