The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
THE DANCING BRINGS ALL FOUR GIRLS TOGETHER
Dolly Alderton’s TV adaptation pledges a funny, messy, yet joyful watch. Gemma Dunn hears why.
When Dolly Alderton released her memoir in 2018, readers were hooked. Her debut title served up an unflinching account of (just about!) surviving her 20s. It won a National Book Award for autobiography and was shortlisted for the 2019 Non-Fiction Narrative Book of the Year in the British Book Awards, and struck a chord with audiences the world over.
So it’s little wonder that news of Alderton’s self-penned TV adaptation also caused quite a stir. Made by Working Title and the BBC, the seven-part series is billed as “a semifictionalised adaptation of the best seller”.
“It’s a messy, boisterous, joyful, romantic comedy about two best female friends from childhood and what happens when they move in to their first London house share and the first phase of adulthood,” says Alderton, 33.
Set in 2012, with flashbacks to suburban adolescence in the early noughties, the drama dives into the bad dates, heartaches and humiliations that fans of the book know all about – and yet asks if platonic love can survive romantic love as we grow up.
At the centre of the story are childhood best friends Maggie, played by The Witcher’s Emma Appleton, and Birdy, played by The Morning Show’s Bel Powley; plus university friends Marli Siu as Nell and Aliyah Odoffin as Amara. “When we first meet Maggie, she’s just finished her university gap year and she’s moved to London,” says Appleton, 30. “(She’s embracing) adult life in a big city; she’s with her friends and she’s just figuring out what that looks like and what direction she wants to go in in the world – she’s excited by it.”
In contrast, “Birdy is quite anxious and nervy” according to Powley, also 30. “(She’s) Maggie’s childhood best friend.
“They’ve known each other since they were 11 years old, so they’re embarking on this journey together, along with their other friends Nell and Amara.”
“I’d actually read the book because my best friend gave me it – so my Maggie, which I thought was a beautiful thing,” she adds.
“I was completely obsessed with it. I read it and remember thinking, if this gets turned into a TV show then I want to play Farley, who ended being Birdy.”
“I’m the same as Bel; I read it because all my friends were telling me to read it in lockdown,” adds Alex Rider actress, Siu. “Literally every one of my best friends had it.”
Prized for its funny, honest musings on love, friendship and relationships, and growing up as a millennial, the series will feature the raucous nights out, first dates, and awkward sexual encounters detailed by journalist-podcaster-columnist Alderton.
But perhaps the most heart-warming scenes come with the dancing as the foursome learn a choreographed routine at home before being let loose on the dancefloor.
“The dancing is something that brings all four girls together,” says Odoffin, 22, who makes her on-screen TV debut. “That’s the theme that runs through it till the end, if there’s music and there’s communion, that’s when all four girls are right there together.”
“Aliyah is the real dancer of the group – she’s basically a professional dancer – and we had a choreographer for all the dances and spent a week learning them,” Powley recalls, the four having moved to Manchester for the duration of filming.
Her favourite memory is “100 per cent the choreographed dances, learning them and Aliyah teaching them to us in our apartment and then filming them on set. It was just hilarious, funny, gorgeous and great”.
What does the show say about the path of friendship? “I think it says it’s messy and flawed and beautiful and confusing – because you have these outside influences,” Odoffin says. “Especially for Maggie and Birdy as their friendship was formed when they were so young, so it’s the idea of how it shapeshifts as you grow, and life changes happen – when you go to uni and have boyfriends and break-ups and that sort of thing. It shows the love that remains despite all.”
As for the trickier subjects in Alderton’s memoir, from drugs to body dysmorphia and heartbreak, the drama tackles those too.
It’s something we have only seen “in the past few years on screen” says Appleton. “It’s so important (to be able) to go, ‘OK, I’m not the only one thinking that or doing it. So it might open up a discussion, amongst friends when you see it. I think we are seeing a lot more of it, and that comes with the good stuff. Both are true and realistic.”
Everything I Know About Love airs on BBC One on Tuesday, June 7.