I love a book to TV adaptation. Unlike with films, there’s so much more space for a story to develop, for the details of the page to be captured, on the small screen. Recent favourites include Normal People, His Dark Materials, Little Fires Everywhere and now Netflix’s adaptation of David Nicholl’s One Day. This review contains spoilers – so if you’ve not finished watching or read the book, don’t read on!
I first discovered the story of Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley, who meet by chance at graduation and then meet up every year following on St Swithin’s Day, as a teenager and it has stayed with me since. Needless to say, when I saw a Netflix adaptation was in the works I was excitedly sending links to all my friends.
I’ve watched it twice. The first time I wanted to savour it, one episode a night. I need to say up front that I think Ambika Mod and Leo Woodhall are perfectly cast as Dex and Em. Mod captures both the fire and insecurity in Emma perfectly, balancing that sharp and, sometimes cruel, condesending tongue alongside many moments of vulnerability. While Woodhall is arrogant, cocky and rude but underneath just as vulnerable. You dislike him, and the way he drops her hand at every opportunity to begin with, only later to find yourself breaking when he lets himself breakdown. Their chemistry is unmatched and a joy to watch.
“I thought I’d finally got rid of you,” “I don’t think you can.”
Each episode captures a day, the 15th July, in their lives from 1988 to 2007. Following their journey post-graduation and early steps into adulthood, which find Emma struggling as a writer, an actor in an amatuer troop/waitress in a dire Mexican restaurant while Dexter finds fame and fortune, coasting through life. There is a day on which Dexter goes to see his mother, who has terminal cancer, after a night out and lets her down badly. There’s the day Emma and Dexter laze on the beach in Greece, which would’ve been perfect if not for Dexter’s admission that he knew Emma had a crush on him all along. There are years spent apart, missed opportunities and other relationships. I felt for both characters at different moments in their journey, maybe because they so perfectly capture the messiness of love and friendship, the pain of figuring things out in your twenties and that rare magic when you meet someone who loves you as you are and you always find your way back to.
“It’s one of the great cosmic mysteries; how it is that someone can go from being a total stranger, to being the most important person in your life.”
The whole thing is perfect, from the way the actors hook you in and have you believing every word through to the soundtrack and 90s nostalgia in every shot. It leaves you with a deep sense of how important it is to show people you love them while you can. I challenge anyone watching to finish with dry eyes.
