Article contributed by Daniel A
Soulmates is a contemporary science-fiction anthology series that takes place in a world where the soul-particle has been discovered, leading to the rise of the company Soul Connex. As the dating-app-esque advertisement that opens the series states, Soul Connex uses science to conduct a test matching people with their soulmates, with 15 million people having found their perfect match so far.
The first episode follows, Nikki (Succession’s Sarah Snook), who is happily married to her husband of fifteen years, Franklin (Kingsley Ben-Adir), with whom she shares two young daughters, Sammy and Ella. One morning Nikki’s friend and neighbour, Jennifer (Dolly Wells), interrupts her busy morning routine to inform Nikki that she is going to take the test, and would like Nikki to accompany her for support. Nikki is taken aback and suggests she is having a mid-life crisis – she has a husband, Steve, and children of her own – but Jennifer tells her that they married too young and that things have changed with the arrival of the test. ‘I look around me and I see people living their best lives like they’ve found the answer to some secret,’ she tells Nikki, ‘I hate them, and I want to be one of them.’
On their way to Peter’s (Darren Boyd), Nikki’s brother, wedding Franklin comments that it feels like they’ve been going to a wedding every week to which Nikki replies that they have been. During Peter’s wedding speech he tells the guests that he had taken the test six week ago, and that a month later he met his match, now bride, Rose. ‘When did we stop being the normal ones?’ Nikki asks Franklin after returning home from the wedding.
Peter and Rose hold a dinner party to introduce their family and friends to one another. The couple talk about how they felt the pull – a feeling a person gets when their match has taken the test, knowing that someone is out there looking for them. Rose reveals she left her partner to be with Peter. She tells them that knowing about the test made the little things about her partner that never bothered her before become too much. One of the other guests asks Nikki and Franklin if they have ever had ‘the talk’ about doing the test to which they reply they’re happily married with a family. ‘Maybe you’re soulmates anyway?’, the guest responds. Nikki is obviously unsettled, and after returning home teases her brother and his new wife for being smug about their relationship, as she begins to become unconfident in her own.
Nikki accompanies Jennifer to her test and while she waits browses a Soul Connex pamphlet, while watching many happy couples pass her by. Jennifer returns with details of her match, an Argentianian man named Sebastain. Nikki asks her what happens now and Jennifer says Soul Connex send him her details and they go from there.
At a wedding for one of Franklin’s co-workers, who met his partner three weeks ago, Nikki tries to initiate sex with Franklin. He’s upset she would be willing to threaten his professional reputation if they were caught. Arriving home Franklin demands to know what’s wrong with her, she says ‘I’m fine, we’re fine, everything’s fine, yeah our marriage is completely fine’. “It’s always been more than that to me,’ he responds, realising that her recent behaviour is because of the test. She tells him she doesn’t want to take it and apologies to him.
The next morning Nikki runs into the street having heard a domestic dispute between Jennifer and Steve. Nikki manages to get between the quarrelling couple before Steve storms back into his house and she takes Jennifer back to hers. Jennifer tells Nikki that he is threatening to take her children and that he won’t let her back into the house. Nikki offers her a place to stay but Jennifer reveals her match, Seb, is quitting his job and moving from Argentina to be with her. Nikki’s sympathy quickly turns to exasperation, as she tells Jennifer she’s crazy and selfish to think Steve would be okay with her leaving after 18 years of marriage, regardless of whether she loved him or not.
That night Nikki tells Franklin, ‘The world is going crazy, but deep down, we’re okay. You’re all I’ve ever known and that has always been enough for me.’ She suggests a date night, but the couple share a silent meal and car ride home. The next day Nikki goes to Soul Connex to take the test.
Franklin returns home and Nikki tells him that she’s been struggling with everything lately because she thought she wanted or needed more. She tells him she went to the clinic to take the test but all she could think about was how they home-birthed their daughter together, and couldn’t go through with it. She didn’t care what the test would say, she chose him, and is proud of him and the life they have together. Franklin then tells her that he did take the test, he thought he was losing Nikki and had just come back from meeting his match.
Sometime on Nikki and her new partner arrive at Franklin and his partners’ house to pick up Sammy and Ella on the way to a wedding. During a moment to themselves Franklin tells Nikki he misses her, and them as a couple, asking her ‘is this better?’
Ultimately a cautionary tale of ‘the grass is always greener’’ for this couple, spurred on by the arrival of a deterministic artificial intelligence in their world. An enticing world at that, continuously raising thought-provoking questions for audiences. Would you take the test if it existed? If you were married? If you had children? It remains to be seen, however, whether the series’ concept warrants an anthology series. This first episode seems like a good plot for a feature film, but how long can the concept be sustained before turning as stale as the old-school marriages depicted in Soulmates?
