These past few years, my interest in Netflix-produced TV shows has never been so low, due to their tendency to cancel the best ones and renew those with scripts so terrible they might as well have been AI-generated. I’m sure a lot of us professional media devourers feel this way. But once in a while, Netflix manages its way back to the top. One Day is an undeniable rare pearl among many misses.
“One Day was brought to my attention by friends’ suspiciously enthusiastic comments, which could be summed up by ‘Watch it, it’s devastating!’ As a sucker for said devastation, I had to watch it – and so should you.”
I didn’t know anything about the original novel by David Nicholls or its 2011 adaptation featuring Anne Hathaway’s questionable English accent. One Day was brought to my attention by friends’ suspiciously enthusiastic comments, which could be summed up by ‘Watch it, it’s devastating!’ As a sucker for said devastation, I had to watch it – and so should you.
The show’s first episode presents us with the two protagonists, Emma (Ambika Mod) and Dexter (Leo Woodall), at their graduation from the University of Edinburgh. They meet for the first time in the early hours of the very first day of their college-free lives, the 15th of July – also known as St. Swithin’s day. As in the novel, the series is made up of snapshots of each of their lives on this specific day for the next twenty years, a date that echoes ideas of uncertainty and coincidence (or fate, if that’s your thing).
And the first episode successfully leaves you wondering about what could happen next. The story starts with dreams and aspirations that will soon be contradicted by compromises and conflict, while portraying the complexity of their relationship. Without falling back on the trope of the star-crossed lovers (which, let’s be honest, is rarely convincing when it comes to 21st century straight romance), One Day focuses more on what can exist between the restrictive categories of best friend and partner, when you care but don’t understand enough.
“The story starts with dreams and aspirations that will soon be contradicted by compromises and conflict, while portraying the complexity of their relationship.”
The freshly graduated Emma is full of ambition to change her little corner of the world, while Dexter’s privilege allows him to entertain vague aspirations of fame and fortune. He wanders aimlessly around Europe on his parents’ money while Emma finds herself gradually confronted with how difficult it can be, fulfilling those dreams. Her compromises and setbacks struggle to find a match in Dexter’s behaviour, still miles away from her own reality, while he also begins to struggle in his own way.
The original concept of the book perfectly lends itself to a TV show format, and the twenty- to thirty-minute-long episodes allow great pacing that has you gulping down each episode at breakneck speed. Each 15th of July is reduced to a few scenes which leaves enough room for detail and slow moments that masterfully transcribe the people Emma and Dexter are becoming, year by year, when one day becomes a lifetime. But this also brings about an unmatched frustration at all the missed moments in those other 364 days as time inevitably goes by.
But this time isn’t lost. On the contrary, each passing year alternatively presents Emma and Dexter reaching a new high, hitting an all-time low, or simply muddling their way through an aimless routine. In all these cases, they grow and change to hopefully become right for each other at one point. This constant sense of possibility keeps you interested so that you will devour the show like I did, only to be met with unexpected twists and turns, including the frustrating and ill-named dénouement.
“[Emma] is an enticing character, of a depth and reality very much appreciated considering romantic dramas’ history of half-written female leads.”
Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall provide great performances that will undoubtedly propel their eligibility as romantic leads, despite Mod’s initial reluctance to accept the role: ‘It just didn’t sit with me that I would play the girl that the guy fell in love with. You don’t see a lot of brown women on screen being the romantic lead’ (from BBC Woman’s Hour). But she slowly came around to the idea, and who better than someone who already knows the character to make the audience fall in love with her: ‘We’re so similar, there’s no reason it couldn’t be me.’
One element that caught my attention or, to be more precise, a lack I noticed was that Emma’s family is not once introduced to the screen. They are relegated to imaginary voices on the other side of a phone call, and Emma’s repetitive assertions of the distance she wishes to put between her parents and herself. Perhaps their complete absence from the narrative is simply a way to showcase her feelings. But because of the justified omnipresence of Dexter’s parents in the storyline, I also wonder if the anonymity of the Morley family is more of a cop-out, to be attributed to either the author of the original book or the screenwriters for the show, or both.
Either way, this does not directly taint Emma’s characterisation at all. She is an enticing character, of a depth and reality very much appreciated considering romantic dramas’ history of half-written female leads. The dialogues are the most central part of the show and very well executed, perfectly showing off the paradoxical imbalance and complicity between Dexter and Emma in episodes as delightful and feel-good as they can be devastating. To top it all off, the soundtrack infiltrated my playlists with its perfectly curated choice in 90s tracks – a special shout out to the Cocteau Twins, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, and Elliott Smith needle-drops.
Overall, One Day is about making the most of what you have, or may have, and coming to terms with the inevitable passing of time. Even if, for a minute, I felt like the ending was just too much, the last episode brings a perfect mixture of pain, closure, and growth. As someone who’s naturally not very interested in your typical romantic dramas, One Day is without a doubt a prime example of what the genre does best.
WORDS: Nina Bernier
