Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Solos’ On Amazon Prime Video, An Anthology Series With Futuristic Stories Of People Who Are Alone

Have you ever gone to see a monologist or a one-person show live? Despite the presence of the single actor, it’s compelling because the audience is focused on him or her and the stories they’re about to tell. But they tend to not work on TV, because, with the set pieces and costumes and VFX, people get distracted, and they’re expecting a story with some propulsion. But David Weil, creator of Hunters, has produced a seven-part anthology that’s pretty much nothing but monologues. Does it work this time?

SOLOS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: As we see a shot of Anne Hathaway, we also hear Morgan Freeman say, “If you travel to the future, can you escape your past?’

The Gist: Solos is a seven-part anthology series, created by David Weil (Hunters), where each story revolves around one top actor (or in the case of the last episode, two), playing a character who explore what their definitions of humanity are.

In the first episode, Hathaway plays Leah, who has been holed up in the basement of her mother’s house for the past five years, trying to communicate with the future. Namely, with the future version of herself. She desperately needs to talk to Future Leah, and not just so she can be warned about future boyfriends or to pick stocks. As she tries to make contact, she gets a call from the long-term care facility where her mother resides. She’s been suffering from ALS for the last five years, which has robbed her of her ability to communicate with Leah or anyone else.

Leah makes contact and is dismayed to learn that the version of herself that she connected with is from 2019, five years in the past.  “You’re not happy! You’re just dumb!,” Leah tells what she thinks is her past self. But when she tries to communicate with her future self, she gets another, even more naive 2019 model. Which is when she figures out what the first Leah was doing. Then present Leah tells both of her versions why she needs to go into the future, mainly having to do with her mom’s suffering.

In another episode, Uzo Aduba plays Sasha who, has been locked inside a smart home for 20 years, after a worldwide event (maybe a pandemic?) forced her and her loved ones inside for lockdown. Now, the software of her smart home is trying to get her to leave, even if Sasha is still super-resistant to the outside world.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Solos has a vibe similar to HBO’s Coastal Elites, where solo performers essentially monologue for 15-25 minutes, though in the case of the two episodes above, the actors are talking to someone or something, whether it’s a smart home software host or future and past versions of herself.

Our Take: Weil and four other directors helmed the seven episodes of this anthology; the one with Hathaway was directed by Zach Braff. The idea is that, because the episodes are mostly 1-person shows, that using top actors like Aduba, Hathaway, Helen Mirren, Anthony Mackie, Constance Wu and Nicole Beharie — with Freeman and Dan Stevens pairing up in the finale — will help what feel like monologues become actual stories. These actors can convey the full range of emotions that these characters go through, without any real assistance from other actors. In fact, it looks like they’re acting against green screens with very little in the way of surrounding sets.

And that’s the major problem with Solos. When we watched both the Hathaway and Aduba episodes, we never shook the feeling that we were watching acting exercises and not real stories. Don’t get us wrong: The acting that we saw was incredible. But they felt like something you could have seen on a blank stage in the pre-COVID days (or on Zoom these days), with proceeds going to the actor’s favorite charity. They’re fine performances — Aduba’s is especially good — but at no time did we believe that we were watching specific characters existing in their specific worlds.

It could have been that what Weil and his writers wrote was just too dense and didn’t allow for any quiet moments. Even though the episodes more or less had just one actor, there still seemed to be segments designed precisely for monologuing and emoting, but there were no moments that let the performers, or their performances, breathe.

Sure, the episodes we saw were pretty naval-gazing, but that’s not what bothered use. What bothered us is that, when you have an actor talking into a camera and not to another physical presence, the whole exercise gets to look and sound dystopian at best. We don’t expect happy endings on a show like this, but it sure seemed like none of the characters were even destined for mediocre endings. And that gets old after awhile.

And the last episode, with Freeman playing an elderly man named Stuart, holds a bit of a key to this parade of dirges. It’s Stuart’s voice we hear at the beginning of each episode, so he likely has something to do with all of these stories. But do we want to take the six-episode ride to find out that twist? Two episodes in and we’re not all that sure.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: After doing what she did, Leah knows what the “butterfly effect” of her decision might mean, so she sits back, listens to the song her mother played when she was a kid and needed soothing, and awaits her fate.

Sleeper Star: Jack Quaid plays the voice of the smart home computer in the Aduba episode. At alternate times he sounded like Dax Shepard or Adam Scott, but he had some excellent timing, considering he was doing his performing from a recording booth. It helps that he’s the kid of two top actors.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Don’t say girl!” Leah says to her past (or supposedly past) self.

Our Call: SKIP IT. As we said, the performances in Solos would have really worked well on stage. But on TV, even the sharp performances can’t make up for lack of action or story propulsion. There’s a reason why monologuing rarely translates well to film or TV, and Solos shows why.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Solos On Prime Video