Normal People: The show you don't want to watch with your parents
by Rose Collard
Contains spoilers
“I feel like I need to hide under my duvet for 24 hours to decompress”; “I cried so much”; “It leaves me feeling relentlessly melancholic”; “He is so relatable”; “It’s just so painful and perfectly acted” are just some of the messages I have received from friends whilst debriefing on the BBC’s highly anticipated adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People.
Published in August 2018, Rooney’s Normal People was an overnight success: a summer dream of a novel that seemed to get the whole world talking. A follow up to Rooney’s debut novel Conversations With Friends, Normal People soon overtook its predecessor as the better of Rooney’s two smash hits. It sold just under 64,000 copies in hardcover in the US in its first four months of release and went on to be voted as the 2018 Waterstones' Book of the Year and Best Novel at the 2018 Costa Book Awards. It was also longlisted for both the 2018 Booker Prize and the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction. No pressure, then, for the BBC / Hulu television adaptation.
Fortunately, this screen adaptation of a well-loved novel does not fit in the all too popular category of ‘good… but not as good as the book’. This is a rare thing in the world of adaptation. Though the beeb has been churning out some stupendous book-to-series content of late (Noughts and Crosses and His Dark Materials are highly commended in this category) neither have brought their original texts to life quite like Normal People.
The story’s on-again off-again central couple Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal) are as close to perfect as casting can get. Individually mesmerising, they’ve an electric chemistry that sizzles through the screen. Edgar-Jones’ Marianne is smart, sensitive, interesting, mysterious and - of course - beautiful. She captures Marianne’s schoolgirl awkwardness with a fragility that is both heartbreaking and frustrating, and her mid-series transformation from uncomfortable schoolgirl to erethral, popular Trinity student is remarkable.
As a native Londoner, Edgar-Jones’ northern Irish accent is respectable, although her London lilt is sometimes discernible when compared to Mescal’s native tones. Speaking of which, Mescal’s Connell is... well. He’s really fucking fit. Given the demographic of Normal People (female; millennial; hopeless) this is some outstanding casting. Sweet and socially uncomfortable on top of his rugged good looks, I challenge any person alive - regardless of sexual orientation - to not have their body temperature raised by his impassioned stares and beefy arms. Lest we forget that chain, that has got us all fantasising about the sweet, sweet taste of rust.
Looks aside, Mescal’s character actually benefited from the visualisation afforded by the series. His abandonment of Marianne for the more popular Racheal (Leah McNamara) at the school Debs Ball, for example, is a real dick move in the novel. Bizarrely, on screen you kind of empathised with his plight. Desperate to save face in front of his less intelligent, more popular friends, anyone who has experienced the pressures of school hierarchies would be able to understand - even if not condone - his actions.
Other characters were equally tangible. Leanne (Connell’s mum, played by Sarah Greene) was a cool and kind sidekick, and the mother/son chemistry between her and Mescal as admirable as that between Mescal and Edgar-Jones. It is not only the central characters that make stories like this so palpable; credit must also go to those supporting roles that stoke the fire. Likewise Marianne’s family - her harsh mother and brutal older brother, played by Aislin McGuckin and Frank Blake respectively - were every bit as frustrating and frightening as they were in the novel.
The power of Normal People, I’ve always thought, is the purity of the love between Marianne and Connell versus the somewhat impure context in which it exists. When we meet them, Marianne is an outcast at school whereas Connell is a popular football player. At university at Trinity College, Dublin, Marianne becomes the socialite and Connell the loner. The shift in dynamic between the university and school power structures and then Marianne and Connell’s relationship is palpable. At one point, Marianne laughs with a throng of friends outside a lecture, just as Connell has done three episodes back with his friends outside a classroom. The direct comparison exemplifies their shared romantic anxiety toward each another - neither seems able to see themselves as the other one does.
Other successful mirroring techniques include the mutual repetition of disparaging lines: ‘I could have told you that’ when discussing the unsuitability of one another’s ex-partners, and ‘at the end of the day they are my friends’ about one another's peers. It is exactly these kinds of understated on-screen interactions that make Normal People such a joy to watch. The subtle lines, furtive glances and explosive chemistry between Marianne and Connell convey the depth of their intense passion that - despite the steamy bedroom scenes - is so much more than just physical.
On the subject of steam, Edgar-Jones spoke on Radio 4 recently about an incredible intimacy coach they worked with for these moments. Though they were evidently a great help here (put it this way: I’ll never be watching this series with my parents) it’s not just through the sex that this intimacy is so evident. I’ve not seen a more accurate portrayal of the unspoken uncertainties of love than Connell, in one of the couple’s off-again periods, reaching out and taking Marianne’s hand saying ‘I think it’s pretty obvious I don’t want you to go’. And Marianne, unable to look at him, replies ‘it’s not obvious to me at all what you want.’ Shivers.
There are, despite my gushing, some serious errors with the series. Its attempt (was there even one?) at diversity is shocking. The only people of colour in the entire twelve episodes were Connell’s therapist, who had maybe fifteen minutes of screen time, and Marianne’s abuser. Every single relationship depicted was heterosexual. And during Marianne and Connell’s first kiss, Marianne was needlessly over-sexualised. If you didn’t know from the book that during said scene the two would kiss then her mussed up hair, lacy bra and off the shoulder jumper easily signposted it for you. (Connell, unsurprisingly, received no such treatment in this scene and was wearing a zipped up tracksuit.) Come on BBC, I thought whilst watching it, you should be better than that. Finally - this is less a criticism and more an observation - how many first year university students drink red wine and host dinner parties? Where is the Sainsbury’s basics vodka and sticky warehouse dance floor? Perhaps it is a Trinity thing.
Whilst the first half of the series is fairly light-hearted and youthful, the second takes a much darker turn. The honesty with which the show dealt with Connell’s depression should be applauded, and his breakdown in the therapist’s office ought to be compulsory viewing for all young men. It was refreshing, not to mention emotional, to see such an upfront portrayal of male mental health. In a similar way Marianne’s masochism, reaching its peak in her year abroad in Sweden, was addressed with thoughtful competence. Indeed, both of these intenser narratives benefitted from being on screen rather than on page. Actually seeing both characters suffer in such terrible ways brought home the reality of their issues, and made their dependence on one another even more understandable.
What Normal People (both book and tv series) does so well is to tell a story that we have all experienced in some form - whether that be the infatuation of first love, pining for the one that got away, being misunderstood, power and sex, grief, self-loathing, inadequate friendships, or the simple awkwardness of being a teenager.
No wonder I received so many heartfelt messages from friends after watching it. Good love stories don’t come along that often, and rarer still are good adaptations of said love stories. And if there’s anything stories can do more of in these difficult times, it’s to remind us of the wonderful, magical possibilities of love.
