Conversations With Friends review: We want to like this so much but...
Sasha Lane and Alison Oliver in Conversations With Friends, on RTÉ One.
The first two episodes of Conversations With Friends are like watching a five-year-old putting on his shoes, with their little tongue peeking out the side of their gob. You know they can do it, technically, the skills are there, and the intent is pure, but you just want them to hurry up and get on with it. You can't say that, though, because you are a GOOD MOTHER and you adored Normal People and you want to like this too.
Much like the rest of the human race, I was on the Normal People fan bus. So, when pretty much the same creative team adapt Sally Rooney's first novel, our expectations are understandably high. I mean, most of us can't look at a pair of O'Neill's shorts without having a moment. Thanks a lot, Paul Mescal.
We're promised 12 episodes of Conversations With Friends, commissioned by BBC and Hulu, RTÉ's got their hand in there and it's co-financed by Northern Ireland Screen. Oscar-nominated director Lenny Abrahamson is back at the helm, sharing directorial duties with Leanne Welham (His Dark Materials). I am here for this, lads. There's been a whole lot of build-up and hype about the series, and I couldn't wait for it to hit the small screen. I say 'hit', more like it delicately brushes up against the small screen with a meaningful sigh.
To be fair, it was always going to be trickier to transfer that inner intimate world of Book Frances to Screen Frances, and Cork actress Alison Oliver does a magnificent job of conveying a multitude with no more than a slight widening of her mascara-free eyes. Throw in a lip-quiver and a fiddle with a wine glass and you've got half the plot.
Sure, there's minimal dialogue going on in the debut duo of episodes, but it does set the scene for us fairly quickly. Frances and Bobbi (Sasha Lane) are students above in Dublin, ex-lovers, current besties and spoken word performers. Frances is timid and introverted, and a martyr to her monthly curse. She's a poet, but she doesn't really know it, she doesn't write any of her pieces down, she says "I feel a bit sick when I think about it lasting forever".
Bobbi is bold, unfiltered, American and a small bit of a pain in the hole. She says things like: "Off you fuck, then," and "I sense their disconnect". Ugh.
With Bobbi leading the charge, the pair entangle themselves in the lives of cool married couple, writer Melissa (Jemima Kirke) and actor Nick (Joe Alwyn).
The four of them get off with each other a party - but we only see Frances and Nick's smooch. We also hear it, graphically - good God, breathe much? Now I’m waiting for the next two episodes to see if anything more exciting happens. With the chats about Communism and the PG text messages, I’m not holding out much hope, and I don’t really care about the other two characters.
- Frances, Bobbi and Melissa extolling the joys of sea swimming in Monkstown.
- ‘I’m older than you and it was my wife’s birthday.’
- Frances’s flatmate Megan. A Cork girl whose main characteristic is that she’s ‘quiet’? I don’t think so.
