"Love Matters" is an anthology series, following different characters and plots in each episode. In this case, both the style and quality of episodes were extremely varied. Because there are only 6 episodes of 20 minutes each, I decided to do a quick overview in one series review, rather than 6 ultra-short episode reviews.
The series started out with "30 and Counting", a comedy about a very unlikely group of three flat-sharing young men. There's the nerd with seemingly no love life of his own, and the recently separated bloke who can't get over his ex. Together, they manage to convince their flatmate, who wants to give up on dating entirely after a streak of bad luck, to give online dating a try. What follows is a nice, but a bit over-the-top story about ideal partners, and issues of on-line dating. All in all, it was one of the better episodes of the bunch.
"Officially Special" is another comedy, about a 30-something woman with commitment issues in all aspects of her life. It's a simple one, but I enjoyed it nonetheless thanks to some good acting. In contrast, I had no love for the musical sugariness of "Miss Wright". The slightly surreal story about two female co-workers with very disparate ideas about love, and one's pursuit of it, was not interesting enough to make it worth sitting through the singing bits.
I had difficulties adapting to "Aphrodite Fry", which was the first episode I wouldn't call a comedy. However, it won me over in the end. It is a wonderfully simple story about two very different people, and the nature of relationships and sex. It put a smile on my face in the end, which probably makes it my favourite episode of the bunch. "A Nice Arrangement" is the other non-comedy offering, and deals with inter-cultural relationships. Satpal has been with his girlfriend for two years, but kept her secret from his very traditionalist Sikh mother, who he fears might disapprove of the relationship. He struck a deal with a Sikh woman in the same situation. The two pretend to be lovers in front of their families, but see their actual partners on the side. That Satpal didn't tell his girlfriend about this arrangement turns out to have been a huge mistake. Not a lot happens in this story, but it was quite sweet and enjoyable to watch.
Finally, "Kitten Chic" is easily the worst episode of them all. It is one overly long exposition depicting the life of an unpopular, sugary teenage girl whose new crush at school turns out to be gay. The uneventful first 15 minutes of set-up are not worth the pseudo-shocking payoff at all. There's no problem with the story itself, it was just much overdone and overly long, making it very tedious to watch.
So there you have it, a very mixed bag indeed. If you get the chance to watch just single episodes, definitely avoid episodes 3 and 6. If you want to see just the best the mini-series had to offer, stick with episodes 4 and 5. While these are very nice stories, they don't offset the really bad bits enough to make it a series worth recommending overall though. If you can only get the entire series, there are many better ones out there. None of the good episodes are so exceptional that they'd make you forget the worse ones.
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