Must Watch reviews: Falling, Ponies and Dutton Ranch

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

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

This week, Scott Bryan and Hayley Campbell join Naga Munchetty to review ‘Falling’, ‘Ponies’ and ‘Dutton Ranch’.

What do the Must Watch reviewers make of them?

'Falling' is a show created and written by Jack Thorne, who created Adolescence. It's about a nun, played by Keeley Hawes, who falls in love with a priest, played by Paapa Essiedu.

Scott thinks Falling is a Must Watch but Hayley disagrees.
Scott says, “I've watched the first four. I will watch the final two before the end of the day.”

He enjoyed how the show “explores the themes and topics around faith” and that the themes are “so tender and so nuanced and so well‑observed”.

“It comes in with a sense of admiration for the way that people live their lives rather than trying to make a comment about how they do their work.”

Scott thinks you will “end up gaining quite a lot of admiration for people who give their lives to serve their community, even if you're not a person of faith yourself.”

Whereas Hayley thinks there were “incredibly good parts, but it wasn't a Must Watch.”
“I didn't get on as well with it as I was expecting to.”
She says she “rolls her eyes” when TV shows reference “love at first sight”.

“I had a hard time buying into the central story, which is that this nun would upturn her whole life over this one moment in the kitchen with the priest.”

Hayley thinks the show is “too slow” and she ended up “just wanting more of the nun”.

Falling is available to watch on the Channel 4 website.

Ponies is a new comedy-drama set in the 1970s. The series follows two women who become undercover intelligence officers while working in the American Embassy in the Soviet Union. Ponies, in this context, is a spy-world acronym which means 'Persons of No Interest,' because the mindset at the time was that women would never become intelligence officers.

Hayley says, “this was fun, but not essential. So not a Must Watch.”
“I had a nice enough time, but it's not something I'm desperate to get back to.”

She explains the show is a “fun buddy spy thing. It has great music. The performances were great, especially Hayley Lou Richardson from The White Lotus”.

Hayley adds, “Rob Delaney apparently turns up at some point, which is probably worth sticking around for, because I always think he's one of those people that makes something better just by being in it.”

Scott describes Ponies as “a big meh”.
“There are moments where I do think it is fine, but like Hayley, it's about whether you really want to commit to this.”

Scott highlights that there are lots of Russian accents because of the setting but he found that too many of the accents are “jarring” which “took me out of the show”.

“The first 20 minutes is trying to get to a set up. But, until that moment, there wasn't that much humour and there wasn't that much entertainment.”

Ponies will be available to watch on Sky and the streaming service NOW from Friday 22nd May with episodes also airing on Sky Atlantic.

Dutton Ranch is a spin-off Paramount’s highly-rated Yellowstone series. It picks up where Yellowstone series 5 left off, with Rip Wheeler (played by Cole Hauser) and Beth Dutton (played by Kelly Reilly) gamble everything on a new life in South Texas.

But the promise of building a future far from the ghosts of Yellowstone quickly collides with new realities and a rival ranch that will stop at nothing to protect its empire.

Scott says, “it's not a Must Watch, I think it's a good watch.”
“A lot of it depends on how hooked you are on Yellowstone, which is deemed to be by some like The Godfather, set in the middle of America. It's all about power. It's about family dynamics. It is about rivalry.
“There's a lot of cowboy hats, there's a lot of cinematic shots as people ride off into the sunset on their horses. That's literally what this sequel series is like.”

He says he wasn’t “hooked in” to Dutton Ranch but explains that he felt the same way about Yellowstone.
Hayley says, “anyone who's been listening to Must Watch for a while knows that I just don't get on with Taylor Sheridan shows because I don't think he can write women.”

But she adds that she found Dutton Ranch “broadly less annoying than I tend to regard Taylor Sheridan's shows.”
“For me, I can enjoy an episode or two of watching actors like Kelly Reilly and Annette Bening do accents and be awful to each other. And I love watching Ed Harris in basically anything.”

Overall Hayley says this is “just a world I don't really care about, I just won't be going back to find out what happens on the ranch”.
The first two episodes of Dutton Ranch are available to watch now on Paramount+ with a new episode available to watch every Friday.

Listen to the full reviews of all three programmes on BBC Sounds.

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.

We used AI to transcribe and summarise our Must Watch feature. This article was then written and reviewed by a BBC journalist. More on how the BBC uses AI.