蜜芽传媒

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Scott Bryan and Hayley Campbell review three shows: Destination X on 蜜芽传媒, U&Drama’s The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Veil on Disney+.

Destination X is a reality competition where contestants are taken on a mysterious journey, but they don’t know where they are. With each challenge, they gather clues to guess their location, while strategy and deception play a big part in staying in the game.

The Count of Monte Cristo is full of intrigue, luxury, and betrayal, with its stylish blend of classic literature and contemporary thrills.

The Veil is a psychological thriller that blurs the line between truth and illusion. A woman wakes up with fragmented memories and uncovers a chilling conspiracy tied to a secretive organisation and possibly, the supernatural.

What do the Must Watch reviewers make of it all?

Hayley: “It's not a must watch for me.”

“I mean, I tried multiple times to weasel out of reviewing this.”

“It's a combination of two shows I don't like combined with the subject at school that I simply failed.”

“I just will never ever find it interesting to watch reality shows in which people get excited about the arrival of either a host or a new form of transport.”

“I simply don’t care.”

“You get to play along.”

“But if that's genuinely why you want to watch it, then you should probably ignore everything the contestants are saying and put them on mute.”

“Just focus on what you can see because all the clues are there.”

“At the end, you'll feel quite silly for missing them because you are listening to people.”

Scott: “Yeah, okay, sure.”

“It isn't a Must Watch.”

“When you have a show that's essentially a blend of two others, it sort of makes you want to watch those shows instead of this one because I think Race Across the World is great because of the contestants in it.”

“You really follow their story and also you get to see parts of the world that don't really conventionally come up on TV.”

“For Traitors, of course, is a game of manipulation and deceit and there's sort of this whole thing throughout where they try to basically give some clues to some contestants.”

“And also when they had lunch, the packaging could give away where they are in Switzerland or Germany or wherever.”

“So they had to decant everything into different plastic boxes.”

“But then again, I think the fact that I'm more interested in the behind-the-scenes production bits than the show maybe highlights, you know, how good the show is.”

“I think it's not bad.”

“It's like it's August.”

“It is just August.”

“It's not great.”

Naga: “Scott what did you think of it, is it a must watch?”

Scott: “It’s not a Must Watch, I sort of think it’s a bit of an all style no substance really.”

“It looks exquisite, really, really premium, the settings really come through, you can tell that they spent a lot of money on it, very, very premium.”

“This is an international production being shown on the channel U&Drama, but also it’s got a great cast, there’s just something about the script, it just felt a bit hammy, sometimes felt a little bit obvious.”

“There’s a lot of cliches, like this person comes back from being at sea for a long time, immediately hugs his wife on top of a cliff top with the wind blowing in their face…”

Naga: “Very Wuthering heights…”

Scott: “I was a little bit like ‘why not go inside and make a cup of tea?’”

“It just feels a little bit twee at times.”

“It also felt a bit like a theatre production on TV…”

Naga: “Yeah and in theatre you have to really project and everything is amplified so it’s seen much more.”

Hayley: “ I thought the acting was really wooden, but then I started to forgive the actors for what they were doing, because the script was so hammy, I was like ‘they don’t have much to work with…’”

“The story is just, basically, if you’ve never watched one of the adaptations, it’s about a guy irritating two other guys so much that they stitch him up for treason and so the first episode is mainly men doing bitchy looks at each other across a dinner table.”

“Lots of different dinner tables. There’s lots of big French outfits, big French ships, the design is gorgeous and all the stuff that we expect from a period drama, but outside of that I just it was terrible accents, mysterious mumbling, but at times it had all the hallmarks of something so bad that you might get fully sucked in, because there was something camp about it.”

Naga: “Hayley, is this a must watch?”

Hayley: “Not for me.”

“I thought I would be into this one, because I really like Elisabeth Moss. I think she chooses interesting roles and they’re usually incredibly dark.”

“I loved her in The Handmaid’s Tale and also Shining Girls, which was one of those early Apple TV+ shows.”
“But I think this one was a misfire.”

“It’s full of amazing looking locations, but I found the plot boring and her English accent was so distracting I could barely concentrate on anything else. It goes from Dick Van Dyke to Downton Abbey in one sentence and it feels like so much of her energy is going in to try and get the voice right. It’s weird, because she nailed the Kiwi accent when she did Top of the Lake, another show I loved, and I would argue that’s a trickier one to pull off…”

Scott: “It is yeah, definitely.”

Hayley: “So aside from that, her character is a bit like a cliched strong female lead with the drinking and the smoking and the whatever… It feels like a female character from the nineties, but not in a good way. But I knew I was out when there was this scene where the two women are on their road trip to Istanbul, we’ve got Elisabeth Moss the spy, and then Yumna Marwan playing the suspected terrorist, and they’re bonding over a shared knowledge of Shakespeare and then Moss quotes Shakespeare to herself in the snow.”

“I just felt a bit embarrassed for everyone.”

Naga: “Scott, What did you think?”

Scott: “I didn’t hate it… I’m surprised this week that we haven’t had any positive reviews.”

“Yet again, it’s watchable, but I found that… you know when certain shows have a polish to them and they make them look really grand, it ends up looking really bland.”

“There’s a scene in the opening airport where they meet and there’s two characters who meet and there doesn’t seem to be any energy, because everything just looks bland and corporate and then you have this… you follow her character as she goes to this refugee camp.”

“And you see her meet this other character where she tries to work out whether she is from ISIS and then you realise that she is not the person who she says she is and then you try to work out whether she is who she says she is, but then you don’t really care that much about whether… and you feel like… yes she’s going to be deceiving people, because she already has throughout the episodes.”

“So I didn’t really care that much about who’s telling the truth and who’s telling a lie, yet again a bit like Monte Carlo, I was able to watch it…”

Naga: “Monte Cristo.”

Scott: “Monte Cristo, I was able to watch it for more than one episode in one sitting, it was a watch that I felt I was able to get myself through.”

“The soundtrack is good, there’s a lot of shots of Elizabeth Moss just smoking and looking into the distance throughout this, but it just felt a little bit lacking and a little bit ploddey.”

“Just a little bit underwhelming.”

Destination X airs on 蜜芽传媒 One on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

All episodes of The Count of Monte Cristo are available on the U app or U&Drama OnDemand.

All episodes of The Veil are available to stream on Channel 4’s streaming services.

But before all that, why not contact Scott and Hayley with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or both on mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening on 蜜芽传媒 Sounds.