The Feed

If you answered, "Yes", then this series is for you!

I should have listened to my hunch and given up 30% into this one, but when you've invested yourself to 70% you have to finish it out - or not. My wife made the better decision and went to bed.

The idea of this storytelling is awesome. It's a great story line and the acting is good. However, it's extremely difficult to follow. It seems to skip and jump in strange ways. It's excruciatingly linear and then jumps to another side plot which never quite gets more than introduced. Maybe I've not watched it closely enough? It's just too confusing.

It's a great premise. The plot doesn't exactly go deep enough for my taste and drags on quiiiiiiite a bit but I found it enjoyable. I don't understand the people complaining about bad acting. It's a talented cast, and they act as realistic as I'd expect for aristocrats runninn a tech dynast.

The premise seemed interesting but by episode 3 I had the overwhelming urge to make coffee, rearrange the pictures on fridge, and then check Amazon for new boots. Back to review - the show was all over the place, the fake American girl's acting was ridiculous and people behaved in ways no one in real life would. Too many different character story lines, some they didn't even need that only detracted from the main story.

I miss early seasons of Black Mirror but not thirsty enough to force myself to watch this show.

Some of the reviews are very glowing, some very scathing. Personally I found "The Feed" on the low side of "meh" (i'd give it 4.5 stars if I could). On balance, I _definitely_ regret wasting 9 or 10 hours of my life on it but (unfortunately) i've also seen far worse. Certainly won't be watching more if it gets renewed.

In general i'm very much out of patience with shows where the writers think "stupid and unlikeable" are the same as "interestingly flawed and complex" when it comes to characters (the inexplicably renewed "Another Life" is similar in that respect, if you could put up with the amount of dumb on display in that show you might enjoy this one too). By the end of series 1 of "The Feed" there are maybe 2 or 3 characters I still cared about out of an ensemble cast of around 10. Everyone else had shown themselves to be idiotic, despicable or both in that dull, predictable way that some writers seem to believe is "capturing human truth".

The storytelling also feels a bit flabby with at least a couple of the main strands (plus one totally inconsequential fishing related tangent) that just feel tacked on to pad out a fairly thin sci-fi mystery plot. All the worthwhile aspects of this story could've been told in around 6 episodes IMO.

So i'd say avoid. Maybe the book it's adapted from is better. Or maybe you'll watch this and think it really is as clever as it seems to believe it is (i'd guess mainstream viewers might see it as more original and be generally more impressed with it than long-time sci-fi fans), there's no accounting for taste after all.