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Amazon's star-studded Solos is the latest in the golden age of expensive, empty sci-fi anthology

  • "Created by, and mostly written or directed by, David Weil – showrunner of Amazon’s impressive but ethically erratic Hunters – Solos has attracted a plush cast," says Jack Seale. "There are several A-listers here, seizing the opportunity to act furiously with minimal interruption. Often that means attempting the one simple trick – Alan Bennett is the master of it – that makes a lot of dramatic one-handers work: the superficially trivial anecdote that conceals a definitive emotional truth. Even in an alternate futurescape, every settee still has a cream cracker underneath. Anthony Mackie, for example, as a dying man trying to teach the unique joys of his family life to the clone that will replace him, informs the replica about his wife’s farts and his son’s ice-cream preferences, these being details he didn’t appreciate until he became ill. Helen Mirren, taking a trip across the galaxy because her disappointing Earthbound existence has left her with nothing to stick around for, tells the spaceship’s AI about a failed teen romance that represents a lifetime of chances not taken. However, such sketches require an empathic acuity and humble lightness of touch that Solos doesn’t possess. It has a weakness for the sort of lines that make bad writers high-five themselves. It has a weakness for the sort of lines that make bad writers high-five themselves. Sentences with literary delusions, such as 'I push through the barrier of bodies – hot, salty tears stinging my eyes' or 'We were standing there, her chlorine-wrinkled hands balanced on my nervous body' drop out of the actors’ mouths. If they were declaimed in a theatre for the upper circle to hear, you might get away with them; on a small screen, they land with a tinny thump."

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    TOPICS: Solos, Prime Video