It’d be lazy to call this sizzling romance a new Normal People (it is, though!)
One Day
Thursday, Netflix ★★★★★
Hot Mess Summer
Wednesday, Amazon Prime
★★★★★
One Day is an adaptation of the 2009 romantic best-seller by David Nicholls that was made into a film in 2011. It starred Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess and was not memorable, although, having said that, Hathaway’s Yorkshire accent, which has never been heard in Yorkshire before or since, actually was. It’s all I can remember, in fact.
But this adaptation has time on its side, with 14 half-hour episodes, and also two leads who have proper, bona fide, delicious, terrific chemistry. Most critics will, I’m sure, be calling it ‘the new Normal People’, but I would never be so lazy. You know I’d never be that lazy, right?
The two leads are Ambika Mod, who was so wonderful as junior doctor Shruti in This Is Going To Hurt, and Leo Woodall, who was so wonderful as charming yet sinister Jack in the second series of The White Lotus. This series will probably send their careers stratospheric, and if they came to me for advice I would say to them: Paul Mescal’s agent, that’s who you want. He hasn’t put a foot wrong, that Mescal fella. That’s what I’d say, if I were the sort of lazy critic who’d invoke Normal People yet again. You still know that’s not me? Don’t you?
Mod and Woodall play Emma and Dexter, who graduate from the University of Edinburgh on July 15, 1988 and spend the night together. The story then follows them by dropping in on both every July 15 for 20 years, which is a terrific conceit, as it eliminates the need to show us the actual events on other days. Successes, failures, break-ups, triumphs, weddings and career upsets can all happen off screen. What matters are the different ways life knocks them about and the cumulative effect.
At the outset, Emma is an earnest, industrious, working-class northerner with a first-class degree in English, while Dexter is a playboy type from a wealthy background who has scraped a 2:2 degree in anthropology. They spend the night together but don’t have sex. They also spend the following day together climbing Arthur’s Seat and strike a deal, the details of which we don’t learn until right at the end. All we know is that they are committed to a platonic relationship. This, to be fair, does make the first four episodes drag somewhat. Is this what it’s going to be? If it is going to be a further ten episodes of them not realising they are right for each other, while we do, God give me strength. But bear with, bear with.
Dexter falls into presenting ‘yoof’ television shows with names like ‘Largin’ It’. He becomes famous quickly, but it’s shallow work and, simply via Woodall’s performance, we know that he knows it deep down. He goes through a period of being an obnoxious Hooray Henry type. His mother (magnificently played by Essie Davis) gets it when she tells him: ‘You’ve had everything and not done anything with it… you are not very nice.’
Emma works in a faux Tex-Mex restaurant, which makes her ‘smell of Crisp ’n Dry’, before becoming a teacher and then a writer. She is his rebuke. They keep in touch, even though she acquires a boyfriend – Ian (Jonny Weldon), the world’s least funny, neediest stand-up comedian – and he marries Sylvie (Eleanor Tomlinson). There is a magnificent episode where Dexter first meets her parents (Joely Richardson and Toby Stephens), who live in a Saltburn-style country pile and have their own version of Succession’s humiliating dinner party game, boar-on-the-floor. It’s mesmerisingly horrifying.
The book has been adapted by Nicole Taylor (Three Girls) and there are some brilliant lines. When Emma is teaching she is in charge of the school production of Oliver Twist and her Oliver is terrible but so committed ‘he has been in character for six weeks and would get rickets if he could’. No, these things never work in print, so you are going to take it on trust that the script is funny and sharp.
But it all depends on the two leads and they have been superbly cast. Even when Dexter is at his least likeable, Woodall lets us know there is a good boy with a good heart underneath. As for Mod, her face is so unusually expressive I could look at it all day, every day without ever getting bored. And together they do sizzle. I think this series will be a sensation, just like that other series I could mention but won’t. Because, as we know, I’m better than that.
I can’t now remember why I thought Hot Mess Summer might even be a goer. Perhaps I’d been lulled into a false sense of security by newish reality shows such as The Traitors and My Mum, Your Dad, which treated its participants with respect unlike, say, Big Brother or Love Island.
Also, it’s presented by Rylan Clark, who we love. But you know what? This could equally have been presented by Dexter. At, if not his lowest point, then getting there. The deal is that a group of eight boozy twentysomethings are flown to the Greek island of Zante, where they think they are going to be partying. But they are not. Having been nominated by friends and family who are fed up of their hedonistic lifestyles, they will be working in a bar. It’s not exactly coal mining but they are horrified. One typical remark from one of the fellas: ‘The only thing I want to be working is a girl’s behind.’ You get the picture. They can’t drink on the job or fraternise with customers, not that they pay any heed. (‘I’m a rule-breaker and I’ll do what I want.’)
Rylan pops up occasionally and provides the sarky voiceover, but I’m not clear why we are here. To ridicule? There are six episodes, and maybe there will be some hugging and learning along the way. But I’ll never know. I checked out after two.