This review may contain spoilers
Great concept crammed into too short a format
The concept is a really interesting one. Monos stuck in a world of greys, blacks and whites who have a person who is their 'probe', able to trigger a 'colour rush'. As a concept its great, with plenty to offer.
Problem is, its too big a prospect for a miniseries with only 15m per episode. Only 8 episodes total leaves the story feeling rushed and underdeveloped. There just wasn't enough time to dig deeply into world building, where monos risk becoming obsessed and possessive of their probes or on the other hand probes abusing the inherent power they would have in relationships with their monos. Equally, the whole idea of a 'colour rush' raises the comparison to a drug addict desperate for his next fix, is that what probes are to their monos? The probe is the drug they grave even at the expense of a loss of personal agency or rationale thought?
Then what about wider society? Is there discrimination against monos? To regular folk able to see colour fear them? The mono protagonist in our story at the outset actually mentions to us in his thoughts he thought monos and norms (especially monos and probes) should be kept separate...a longer format with more time per episode could dig into the idea of equality, tolerance vs segregation and fears of 'the other' who are not 'us'.
As I say, great concept but they just didn't have the chance to truly flesh it out due to the lack of time per episode. Not enough episodes, and the episodes we do have are much too short to do the concept justice.
That said, the acting is great and the music (such as there is any) is completely fine. Terms of re-watchability, not sure I'd re-watch each episode in full, but I certainly enjoy a few moments. This has charm, and is certainly worth a watch if you haven't seen it before, just know going in that this is a good example of a great concept squeezed into too short a format - it simply can't completely deliver on the prospects it raises, nevertheless great acting, solid cast and enjoyable enough for what it does accomplish.
Problem is, its too big a prospect for a miniseries with only 15m per episode. Only 8 episodes total leaves the story feeling rushed and underdeveloped. There just wasn't enough time to dig deeply into world building, where monos risk becoming obsessed and possessive of their probes or on the other hand probes abusing the inherent power they would have in relationships with their monos. Equally, the whole idea of a 'colour rush' raises the comparison to a drug addict desperate for his next fix, is that what probes are to their monos? The probe is the drug they grave even at the expense of a loss of personal agency or rationale thought?
Then what about wider society? Is there discrimination against monos? To regular folk able to see colour fear them? The mono protagonist in our story at the outset actually mentions to us in his thoughts he thought monos and norms (especially monos and probes) should be kept separate...a longer format with more time per episode could dig into the idea of equality, tolerance vs segregation and fears of 'the other' who are not 'us'.
As I say, great concept but they just didn't have the chance to truly flesh it out due to the lack of time per episode. Not enough episodes, and the episodes we do have are much too short to do the concept justice.
That said, the acting is great and the music (such as there is any) is completely fine. Terms of re-watchability, not sure I'd re-watch each episode in full, but I certainly enjoy a few moments. This has charm, and is certainly worth a watch if you haven't seen it before, just know going in that this is a good example of a great concept squeezed into too short a format - it simply can't completely deliver on the prospects it raises, nevertheless great acting, solid cast and enjoyable enough for what it does accomplish.
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