One Day review: A gorgeous adaptation
Review Overview
Cast
10Characters
10Feelings
10David Farnor | On 14, Feb 2024
“It’s one of the great cosmic mysteries. How it is that someone go from being a total stranger to being the most important person in your life.” That’s Emma (Ambika Mod) speaking at a wedding in the middle of One Day. Netflix’s new series, based on the novel by David Nicholls, charts the answer behind that mystery by watching it play out almost in real-time with disarming candour and heart.
For those who haven’t read the book, or seen the 2011 film adaptation starring Anne Hathaway, the story centres on Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall), who meet on graduation night at Edinburgh University. It’s 15th July. St Swithin’s Day. And we begin to follow their relationship through the lens of that day over the next 20 years. In the movie, that meant condensing a dizzying, complex bond into a two-hour runtime. The genius of Netflix’s series is that it does the opposite: with each episode, bar the concluding chapter, able to take one year at a time, it expands and expands to fill the box set’s 14 episodes with a gorgeous, literary scope.
The writing team, led by Nicole Taylor (Wild Rose), do a masterful job at packing in detail after detail into each instalment – the episodes are almost treated as movies in their own right, with a rawness to the depth and breadth of each small situation that really is quite remarkable. We have time to linger with them as they spend their first moments together. We have time to pause and share in the sadness of a tragic family illness. We have time to swoon over summer afternoons in the park, to cringe over wealthy people playing “Are You There, Moriarty?”, the wince at painful arguments, to frown at seeing each of them spend time with other partners who clearly aren’t their soulmate.
The period touches in the production design are impeccable, adding to that immersive feeling of each interlude – every needle drop is precisely calibrated to put you in that calendar year, while the interior decor of every set makes for painstakingly accurate backdrop.
But of course, all this wouldn’t work without a cast to love, and boy is this ensemble a heart-stealing bunch. Eleanor Tomlinson is superb as Sylvie, who goes from snooty to unlikeable to ambiguously caring. Jonny Weldon is hilarious at the awkward Ian, who goes from sweet to sneering to sweet again with a sniffling charm that’s all too believable. And Essie Davis and Tim McInnerny are pitch-perfect as Dexter’s parents, Davis a considerate, compassionate figure and McInnerny an amusingly stoic fellow, but both of them capable of dissolving into laughter or tears at a moment’s notice.
The stars, however, are undoubtedly the lead couple. Leo Woodall is irresistibly charismatic as Dex, a privileged spoilt boy whose descent into media yuppie is convincingly loathsome even as his surprising vulnerability makes him endlessly forgivable. Ambika Mod, meanwhile, is breathtaking as Em, delivering us a protagonist who’s earnest and earthy but also deadpan and harsh, bringing an edge to her creativity and ambition that makes her more rounded than she might have been. They’re great apart but more importantly together, clashing just the right amount even as they connect on multiple levels – they have the chemistry that all good couples have, which amplifies who they are as individuals, poshness, determination and all.
Mod and Woodall sweep us along in the whirlwind of their everyday lives, and the quotidian rhythm that builds captures both the immediacy of romance and the pull of nostalgia for days that have passed. Because, as each full but fleeting half-hour episode slips through our fingers, One Day reminds us that, actually, we don’t really have time at all – we only have what’s right in front of us now. And the show is so good at wrapping us up in the intense emotions of that moment that we don’t even realise how important these strangers have become to us. By the time we do notice, the credits are rolling and it’s too late.