New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Netflix’s ‘The One’ offers eerie matchmaking drama
Online dating is everywhere these days, and many newlyweds can credit a dating app with helping them find their significant others. Netflix’s new sci-fi drama “The One” takes the concept of online dating and cranks it up a few notches in a series about finding love through DNA matching.
Based on the book by John Marrs, the Netflix series explores how a pair of scientists were able to find someone’s perfect person through DNA matching and revolutionized the ways people formed romantic relationships. Of course, with any new discovery there’s bound to be tension and resistance, but this genetic matching technology has the power to damage lives.
“The One” follows four different plot lines as the story unfolds. The first follows how the company —called “The One,” its a competitive tech company — connects someone with the perfect partner through genetic matching. In the second story line, viewers are transported into the past, as the scientists work to test and refine their discovery
before their discovery blossoms into The One.
The series also examines how the idea of finding your soulmate through DNA matching has impacted how society looks at its relationships. As The One becomes increasingly popular, a marriage begins to fray, as the wife ponders her husband’s “match” and allows jealousy to take over, as she sets out to find his “match” behind his back. Later, she worries that meeting his genetic “match” would cause him to fall out of love with her and tries to make it so the two never meet.
The fourth story line revolves around a detective investigating the death of a man connected to The One company and her own struggles in connecting with her “match.”
Somehow, the idea of finding your perfect person becomes increasingly sinister, as Rebecca — the face of The One company and its co-founder — uses her company’s ability to help people find love to become more powerful and manipulate others. Rebecca understands how much people long to be in love, using it to prop up her company and to gather as much power as possible.
Who knew finding your perfect match would be such a dark business?
“The One” has one season available on Netflix and the series is rated TV-MA. Viewers looking for more sci-fi drama might enjoy
“Altered Carbon.” The series is about a future where people can live forever at the right price.