Just weeks after Conversations with Friends managed to make being in your twenties seem more boring than roaring, another adaptation of a millennial-centred bestseller offers a livelier, messier look at life in early adulthood.
New BBC comedy-drama Everything I Know About Love is based on the 2018 memoir by the journalist Dolly Alderton. While many of us twentysomethings would struggle to fill even a cocktail napkin with profound and compelling anecdotes from our lives, the Times columnist has written an entire book, and now a seven-part series (which she scripted herself) based on her experiences of flat-sharing, dating, writing, drinking and self-sabotaging in London.
Standing in for Alderton is 24-year-old Maggie (Emma Appleton). Armed with a degree in English Literature and a “moderately funny” blog, she arrives in London to realise her dream of making a living as a writer. Having found a flat with childhood friend Birdy (Bel Powley) and university mates Amara (Aliyah Odoffin) and Nell (Marli Siu), Maggie is determined to get the most out of the “city of possibility”. But possibility rapidly turns into impossibility when you only have 39p to your name, share a room with a patch of black mould and can only find work as an unflatteringly-costumed mascot for a barbecue restaurant.
Maggie relishes this “grubby, golden stage of life”, spinning embarrassments and struggles into rites of passage and opportunities for stories. But as her flatmates all begin to give themselves over to the daily grind and long-term relationships, she finds herself left behind. To stave off her loneliness she dates a pseudo-bohemian musician called Street (Connor Finch), whose poetry-spouting, fedora-wearing pretentiousness is eclipsed by his aloof attitude towards Maggie.
Yet it’s friendship, not romance, that lies at the heart of the series. More interesting than the stream of pep talks and infantilising scenes of “girly” bonding, is the way the show portrays the tensions and insecurities that arise between a group that, perhaps for the first time, is being pulled in different directions.
The drama and humour are spread thin. Bloated 45-minute episodes are weighed down by Maggie’s oscillations between self-pity and self-importance. It can be hard to empathise with her, but a montage scene in which she works on countless fruitless job applications will likely elicit a flash of recognition from anyone who, against better judgement, has chosen writing as their vocation.
★★★☆☆
On BBC1 tonight at 10.40pm and iPlayer, with episodes airing weekly
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