SERIES PREMIERE: The entire Season 1 of this new drama series, a co-production of Hulu and the BBC, is unveiled today on Hulu. Watch in a binge chunk, and you’ll travel briskly through a few years in the lives of its two young main characters. Daisy Edgar-Jones plays Marianne – a well-to-do Irish lass who usually is the smartest person in the room, and usually lets the others know it. Paul Mescal plays Connell, a working-class bloke who is almost as smart, and much more reserved. We first see them as elder teens, as they flirt cautiously with each other, then begin to see each other, and sleep together, off and on. The off and on, in this series based on Sally Rooney’s
Normal People smash novel, starts in high school, and follows them, eventually, to the end of college. The acting by Edgar-Jones and Mescal is vulnerable and not at all self-conscious, and their characters’ emotional push and pull, towards and away from each other, reveals insecurities and concerns that lead to other people, other problems, and, at times, back into each other’s paths and arms. It’s a quiet drama series, and a good one.
For a full review, see David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.