Love on the Run
New laughs from Fleabag creator
Fans of Fleabag, Killing Eve and Richard Linklater’s Before series, I have found your new TV obsession. Everyone else, I have a rollicking rollercoaster of a romantic black comedy thriller that won’t take too much investment, especially in the current locked-down environment.
Created by the recent Emmy- and Golden Globedominating Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her frequent collaborator Vicky Jones, Run (Neon from April 13, SoHo2 from April 16) is the story of Ruby Richardson (Merritt Wever) and Billy Johnson (Domhnall Gleeson).
Despite parting on less-than-amicable terms when dating during their university years, the pair made a pact. If either of them texted the word ‘‘run’’ and the other replied the same, they would drop everything and meet at New York’s Grand Central Station for a train journey across America together.
As the eight-part tale opens, Ruby has received the signal while in a big box retail carpark. After a moment’s hesitation, she confirms her response and heads for the airport.
While her husband wants to ensure she’ll be home for ‘‘the speaker guy’’, Ruby contemplates sending the message that ‘‘I won’t be home for lunch, I won’t be home at all’’, but decides it can wait.
Arriving in the Big Apple, she boards an Amtrak train bound for Chicago, her heart beating out of control. To her relief and horror, there waiting for her is Billy.
It only takes minutes for them to remind each other of their best and worst qualities – and for Ruby to seriously doubt her decision.
‘‘This is unforgivable, who does this?’’ she asks aloud, before suggesting they have a moratorium on personal questions – at least for 24 hours.
However, it isn’t long before uncomfortable truths begin to emerge, and almost two decades of real-life threaten to overwhelm any fantasy.
What follows over the course of the series’ fourhour running-time is a series of brilliantly conceived twists and turns (although one or two of them are more than a little telegraphed), the exposing of a succession of secrets and the revisiting of long-held regrets and recriminations.
That it works so magnificently is not only down to the clever plotting and Waller-Bridge and Jones’ trademark pithy and acerbic dialogue, but Run’s two charismatic leads. Ruby and Billy are two clearly flawed characters, and Wever (Nurse Jackie) and Gleeson (Peter Rabbit, About Time) bring them to memorably shambolic life.
A kind of anti-Richard Curtis rom-com, Run isa darkly comedic journey that is well worth taking.
Meanwhile, fans of a different type of British romance are well served by UKTV’s Sanditon (9.30pm Mondays, with the first episode next screening at 11.05pm tonight).
Also streaming on SkyGo, it’s an eight-part adaptation of Jane Austin’s final novel. Never heard of it? That’s because the beloved British author had only completed 11 chapters of her tale of Charlotte Heywood, before her death in 1817.
Enter Andrew Davies, the man behind the immensely popular 1995 (Colin Firth and
Jennifer Ehle) version of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
From the extant 24,000 words, he’s crafted a delicious period drama filled with all the misunderstandings, scheming siblings, family fortunes, caddish gentlemen, confidences, conspiracies, and ‘‘mean, miserly old monsters’’ the genre demands.
At its heart is a fabulous performance from Rose Williams (Reign) as Charlotte, a young woman whose life is turned upside down when an accidental encounter with an entrepreneur provides her with the opportunity to swap her quiet rural life for the hotels, terraces and cliff walks of the ‘‘south coast’s finest seaside resort’’.
But while Sanditon’s matriarch Lady Denham (Years and Years’ Anne Reid) takes an instant liking to this ‘‘good sensible sort of girl’’, a moment’s carelessness with a forthright view threatens to leave Charlotte on the outer.
First-rate costumes, classy production design, and a fresh storyline, combine to create a potent mix.
And, given the current state of the world, there’s never been a better time to get lost in Austen.