A gritty romance that’s a little bit like Normal People without teen angst
It may start on Valentine’s Day but the six-episode Alice & Jack is not a romance served as comfort food à la Richard Curtis, but instead it’s a close-up view of two unlikely soulmates over a 15-year period.
Alice and Jack are both flawed, but they are also glued together from the moment they meet in a bar, moments before they end up in bed. Created by Victor Levin, whose credits include episodes of Mad Men, the drama sits firmly alongside anti-romcoms such as
Normal People, or Tell Me Lies (both BBC), or David Nicholls’ One Day, which started as a 14-part series for Netflix last week.
It’s set mostly in London – a London of leafy suburbia, wide open spaces, intimate meeting places or cold modernism – depending on where we are in the characters’ ups and downs.
Andrea Riseborough and Domhnall Gleeson are perfectly cast as the romantic leads. Jack, the sensitive, nerdy ‘lab rat’ (he’s a biomedical researcher), ‘back-slides into a vat of pain’ each time Alice, the fiercely intelligent finance ‘assassin’ (a Billions-style fund manager), walks away.
In those stuttering early years, you want to yell at them to sort it out – Jack’s friend Paul (Sunil Patel) frequently, and hilariously, does – but you are also invested in their journey.
And that comes down to Riseborough, who first came to attention as the young Margaret Thatcher in 2008’s The Long Walk To Finchley and is known for dramatic roles. Gleeson has romcom form with Richard Curtis’s About Time and is no stranger to playing science nerds (Ex Machina). That said, he’s also played a serial killer (The Patient).
The stars bring a sadness and depth to their characters that doesn’t feel forced and, despite some frustrating twists of fate, their connection is not as angstdriven as the much younger lovers in Normal People, who are less able to articulate their feelings. That is not Alice or Jack’s problem at all.
They talk, even when it is raw and painful, making theirs an on-again-off-again affair that is handled with maturity and respect.
If you want a drama this Valentine’s that explores how love doesn’t always play out as you expect but also promises joy and healing after heartache, try this.