The One
released 2021
www.ink2quill.com

“The One” is a British, action, scifi, mystery, thriller produced by Johnny Capps, Darren Green, Adam Knopf, Anne Mensah, Julian Murphy and Howard Overman. It was directed by Jeremy Lovering, Catherine Morshead and Brady Hood with the writing credits to John Marrs and Howard Overman. It stars Hannah Ware, Zoe Tapper, Diarmaid Murtagh, Dimitri Leonidas, Lois Chimimba, Eric Kofi-Abrefa, Jana Perez, Stephen Campbell Moore, Gregg Chilingirian, Albano Jeronimo, Pallavi Sharda, Amir El-Masry, Simone Kirby, Wilf Scolding, Eduardo Lloveras, Paul Brennen, Miguel Amorim, Paula Munoz, Louis Hunter, Olivia Chenery, Carlos Kaniowsky, Vivienne Acheampong, Laura Aikman, Nadia Albina, Taz Munya, Claire Lichiel, Indigo Griffiths and many more.

The One IMDb webpage

“The One” is the story of ruthless ambition by the people in the dating technology world who created an app to find the real match of two people. Rebecca Webb, played by Hannah Ware, is the founder and head of a company called `The One´ that finds a person their ideal match, cutting out dating and guarantying to find the best matches for anyone who signs up. Rebecca and her fellow cofounder James Whiting, played by Dimitri Leonidas, steal a database from their friend Ben Naser, played by Amir El-Masry, who is accused of spying from his company and fired from his job for it. His reputation was ruined and that shows just how ruthless Rebecca and James were. As the story develops the number of heinous crimes of Rebecca and her reluctant sidekick continues to grow and Rebecca finds herself dodging the law and ruining the lives of everyone around her.

The story does show a few of the problems that have arisen from people finding their `match´. For example, the number of divorces and unhappy people from those divorces has skyrocketed as people leave their husbands and wives for their matches. Now Rebecca, cold blooded, sociopathic Rebecca claimed that those numbers would drop as a greater amount of people would end up with their matches and the institution of dating would mostly evaporate but who knows. There are also crimes committed by people who want to make changes in their lives or keep their lives and relationships as they are and that is a very serious thing. This new technology and the speed with which it spreads through society and takes over people´s private lives causes ruin to relationships and people´s finances for sure and that is never taken into account. The politicians who try to curb the technology are blackmailed into silence so it has open pastures to spread as it pleases and cause whatever damage and that is a big problem. The biggest problem to society as a whole is the control the company takes over people and their lives. There is a scene when Rebecca, sociopathic Rebecca, blackmails a politician by claiming their child was matched with a dangerous person and that they could keep the child from ever meeting that dangerous person. That is clear and malefic influence on a person and the state. So, just as The One can have people meet their match it can also keep them from meeting that match or give them a bad match and put them in a dangerous position. That is some sinister power this company wields.

how the company called The One uses and misuses the customer info by its CEO Rebecca is shocking and believable. this is a company that offers love without the searching and journey for it like a drug dealer offering euphoria without any moment, sacrifice or journey to get it. It´s the retelling of the guy who offers a pill to end your troubles or a genie to grant your wishes. In those stories you rarely see the consequences but they are there and in this series we get to see some of them. Although not enough if you ask me.

This mini series is also a cautionary tale, like so many scifi stories, on the power of information to be misused and to exert malefic influence on anybody in society. The amount of information Rebecca has on people is deeply disturbing and could very well be the topic of a its own mini series. Not to mention that this company controls the private lives of people, the love lives of people. That is a very powerful chain around the necks of people. And what of the consequences of the couplings from this service? We saw how many divorces and crimes of passion there were as a result of the service but the CEO was not bothered in the least. No precautions were taken to mitigate the harmful effects from the service on society.

One criticism I did have about the series was how it gravitated toward Rebecca and the crimes she committed and not the effects of people no longer having to look for love in society. It never asked the question what would a society where people were given love by technology look like? What kind of problems and advantages would such a society have? Would people be more irrational and unstable when it came to their love lives and everything attached to it? Would you have more suicides when somebody lost their significant other and maybe have a class of people designated as “emotionally crippled” and hence be seen as a burden to society? The effects of this new service was never explored in the series and that is were, I feel, we the viewer wanted this story to go.

I have to say that Rebecca is a great villain. She is as cold and heartless as the best of them and as calculating as you would expect her to be. Watching her bully and wiggle out of the problems she creates for herself and devise her evil plans just keeps your eyes glued.

Needless to say, check out The One because it’s a story with great ideas and a great villain.

John Ink2Quill

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