Here, the minutely detailed interior and exterior monologues in which she specialises have been jettisoned. They were Rooney’s psychological portraits made flesh. Normal People kept the unselfconscious hyper-articulacy and self-analysis of the book’s characters, which made them grating at times but also made them real. Photograph: Enda Bowe/BBC/Element Pictures ‘When everything is evoked, nothing is’ … Alison Oliver and Tommy Tiernan in the drama. Bobbi and Melissa are entranced by each other’s fabulousness, while their more introverted partners inevitably (to anyone over the age of, say, 28?) begin a quiet affair. They are taken into the adult world of glamorous writer Melissa (Jemima Kirke) and thereby introduced to her handsome husband, Nick (Joe Alwyn). They’re also duetting performance poets, but they’re young and we all make mistakes. You can imagine it was intimidating – the epitome of the difficult second album predicament after the raging success of their first collaboration – and it is hard to avoid a creeping sense that they have found themselves paralysed by their own success.Ĭool, confident Bobbi (Sasha Lane) and Frances (newcomer Alison Oliver), whose attempts at cynical poses only highlight her naivety, are best friends who dated at school and have just graduated. Now Birch, writing alone this time, and Abrahamson (directing seven episodes, and Leanne Welham the other five) have reunited.
Rooney’s adaptation, with Alice Birch, of her novel Normal People was a lockdown hit in 2020 for its rich, warm and well-observed tale of young love, sensitively directed by Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald.
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