As you self isolate this week, we feel its our duty to scour the interwebs and get you on to shows you might have missed simply because they hadn’t been moved to an easily accessible screening platform or they just weren’t on the radar like that. Obi Emelonye tackled the medical melodrama with ‘Heart and Soul’, his show recently released to public streaming on Youtube.

Just in case the name doesn’t ring a bell, Emelonye is one of the early pioneers of the ‘New Nollywood’ trend. He partnered with both Omotola Jalade Ekeinde and Genevieve Nnaji on early game changers like Mirror Boy and Last Flight to Abuja, films that helped to cement our cinema culture as regards Nollywood and helped Omotola secure a position in the Time 100 list a few years later. To see him move his attention to long form series, that allow for more character development should be enough to get to you to give ‘Heart and Soul’ a shot.

Shot and originally released in 2019 with Anthony Monjaro as the lead, ‘Heart and Soul’ follows an IJGB medical doctor who is trying to establish himself at a hospital in Nigeria, while deal with issues of faith and complicated personal relationships. Obi Emelonye gets multiple credits for writing, directing and producing the show so you can be sure that the vision that is executed is entirely his.

We feel like we are obligated to warn that if you’re a doctor, you probably should just skip ‘Heart and Soul’ altogether, because you most likely won’t be able to overlook the many inconsistencies in the show, and that will really mess with your enjoyment of the show. We also struggled with the dialogue which a lot of time came off as stilted, but other than that, its pretty enjoyable for a binge watch. Find a link to the entire first season here.