I’m sure I did a thread for this but can’t find it
starts tonight. On wed and thur for 3w
Alice, played by Andrea Riseborough – yes, the Andrea Riseborough of Academy Award-nominated notoriety (https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/oscars/a43777187/oscars-changes-andrea-riseborough-controversy/) – meets Jack, played by Domhnall Gleeson, with all of his About Time (https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a509440/about-time-review-richard-curtiss-directorial-swansong/) romantic-lead kudos.
If you loved Gleeson in that Richard Curtis gem, you will probably fall for him in this, since he's playing much the same sort of bloke.
Jack is an awkward but adorable lab scientist who becomes utterly besotted with spiky female finance-bro (sis?) Alice, who resolves to keep him at a remove the length of several bargepoles.
After the pair spend the night together, Alice unceremoniously asks him to leave and never contact her again.
So far, so romantic. We then scoot forward a couple of years and find Jack has had a child with the rather warmer Lynn (Aisling Bea).
Then Alice calls and the wheels of ill-fated romance are set in motion
The six-parter has been ambitiously billed as a "love story for the ages". That might be a stretch, given that the mood of Alice & Jack is utterly at the mercy of melancholic Alice, helped along by an earnest strumming score which at times feels fittingly bittersweet and at others is reminiscent of hotel foyer music.
As the pair's offbeat and somewhat unlikely connection bubbles away across the years, the question of the piece becomes why is Alice so determined to push Jack away? When the answer comes, the melancholia only quadruples.