TV Review: Alice & Jack is intense, gripping - and human

Domhnall Gleeson and Aisling Bea star in Alice & Jack. Picture: Channel 4

The first episode of Alice & Jack landed on Channel 4 on Valentine’s Day, which was a good joke, because this story of a 15-year relationship is no romantic comedy. 

There is no shortage of love and laughs, but it’s sad and obsessive love at times, interspersed with dry one-liners.

Alice (Andrea Riseborough) and Jack (Domhnall Gleeson) meet online and have passable first-date sex. There is an imbalance. 

Alice is cold and unkind to what looks like her younger lover (it’s not made clear); Jack is awkward and unused to transactional sex. 

She says thanks at the end and tells him not to call her again. He ignores this and they eventually start a relationship. So far so romcom, but Riseborough’s Alice sets this show apart. 

She’s troubled and angry and obviously traumatised by something in her past. It appears to be telling that she doesn’t have any friends.

I was almost screaming at Jack to get away from her. His friend Paul did the same, telling him more than once he was better off without her. 

Eventually, Alice is a kind of rude to someone in an art gallery and Jack has had enough.

Fast forward 18 months and Jack has a child with Lynn, played by Aisling Bea. 

She gets to display her range here from flippant wise-cracker to heart-broken wife, when Jack meets up with Alice again and gets caught rotten. 

I won’t spoil any more of the plot, although in fairness, it’s the characters that matter.

Riseborough carries her pain and trauma in every detail, down to a very tight pony tale. 

Gleeson is sound and nice and very Irish, but convincingly in thrall to Alice, unable to resist when she summons him. 

Aisling Bea’s Lynn is heartbreakingly heart-broken, the pithy one-liners barely patching up the sadness.

Alice & Jack works because you end up backing the wrong couple. 

Jack and Lynn are the nice, normal, well-adjusted people and I’m probably biased because they’re played by two superb Irish actors. 

But Jack only wants Alice, even though she is on constant hair-trigger and inclined to lash out at him for nothing. 

He’s also so honest that even Lynn asks him to lie to her just to make their life easier.

Alice reveals the source of her anger towards the end of episode two. 

There is no huge surprise, it’s sadly predictable, which works because it keeps this as a human-sized drama. 

The show remains intense and gripping, like a great play, with a triangle of superb characters, none perfect, just human beings longing for a connection. Give it a watch.