Normal People

BBC1, Mondays, 9pm

Casting is everything. Especially when it comes to adaptations of our favourite books when we all have very firm ideas of what the characters look like in our mind’s eye. And Normal People by Sally Rooney instantly became the favourite book of a lot of people when it was published in 2018, because it so beautifully captured what it’s like to be young and in love.

Now the TV version, which started this week on BBC1 (and is available in its entirety on iplayer as a BBC3 box set), somehow manages to encapsulate that central romance. And a huge amount of credit for that must go to whoever cast Daisy Edgarjones as quirky outsider Marianne and Paul Mescal, in his first major role of any kind, as sensitive hunk Connell. Not only do they perfectly personify the beautifully nuanced individual characters created by Rooney, but their chemistry together is remarkable. We believe in them entirely as soon as they start talking and flirting with each other at school in the opening episode, despite the class and social divide between them. By the time they get intimate in episode two, their intense, electric attraction feels every bit as startlingly authentic and special as it did in the book.

Scenes of a sexual nature in TV drama can be particularly excruciating and cheesy to watch, or else just glossy and coy. Here, director Lenny Abrahamson (Room) keeps it totally real, finding a way of depicting their intimacy up close without ever feeling creepy or exploitative. Indeed, every element of the series, which follows the couple from school through college as their relationship develops in an utterly fascinating manner, works.