THE
CRITICSJAMES COWENTELEVISION
Normal
People with
no phwoar
Conversations with Friends
BBC3, Sun
The Queen’s Platinum
Jubilee ITV, Sun
The King of Warsaw
Channel 4, Sun
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Sky Atlantic, Mon
Where do you stand on Sally
Rooney? If you scan any
newspaper, you can catch
some light-starved, library-
licking crustacean praising
the spareness of her language,
the fine characterisation, the
lack of frills.
It’s true her work can be
addictive — in the sense that
repeated and vigorous colon
cleanses can become moreish.
Submit yourself to her unfussy,
uptight, vegan prose enough
times and you will find yourself
coming back again and again
to such memorable dialogue
as, in episode one of her new
adaptation, “Hi.” “Hi.” “Hi.”
“Hiiii.” “Hi.” I find it funny.
Yet if you are a director
faced with what is essentially
the thin green juice of
contemporary fiction, do you
choose actors that are full of
passion and personality, such
as, say, Paul Mescal? Or do
you go for some dry hairy
brush of an expressionless
actress from Cork and the
blond actor Joe Alwyn, whose
main claim to fame is looking
a bit like the Cowardly Lion?
Guess which they have chosen
for the follow-up to Normal
People, the adaptation of
Rooney’s Conversations
with Friends?
To say Alwyn is a
disappointment as the show’s
romantic lead, Nick Conway,
is to understate what an
airless bit of lead piping he is.
We are told that his character,
an Irish actor married to a
successful writer called
Melissa, is gorgeous,
handsome, a heart-throb.
“Christ, he’s gorgeous,”
Frances’s mother coos.
Given that Alwyn himself
is a gorgeous, handsome
heart-throb dating Taylor
Swift, you would have thought
that this role might have come
easily. But it turns out that he
can’t even play himself.
It is almost amazing how
every line of dialogue falls like
boring text messages out of
his luscious pout (“yeah” and
“no”). It is like watching two
piles of clothing being paid
to bone each other. It is
Normal People without the
chemistry, and what thin
spirulina slops it is. And just
what is that accent?
Dublin provides the usual
backdrop for students sloping
about, emailing each other
while making casual snide
references to Tennessee
Williams. Frances is a typical
Rooney character, a fey
literary snob who is happy to
sneer at people’s bourgeois
tastes while taking their
hospitality and producing
awful slam poetry.
At one of these cringe
nightclub sessions where
Frances and her best friend
and former lover, Bobbi,
perform their poetry in
unison, they meet Melissa,
a writer who lives
in a sumptuous grey
house that more
trivial people like
me might not be
able to stop
thinking about.
I think the idea is
that Melissa and theJemima Kirke plays Melissa,
and what a bittersweet bit of
casting it is. It seems only a
moment ago that Kirke was
playing the sarcastic, wry
young woman trying to shag
other people’s men in Girls.
Now she’s the out-of-touch
frump tagging around on the
sidelines as Owen’s Frances
moves in on Nick and, well,
call me conventional, but
I’m not sure I enjoy shows
about women stealing
other women’s husbands. It
feels weird to be rooting for
Kirke while not remotely
having time for the leads.
I wanted to like
Conversations — I enjoyed
Normal People — but no one
seems to know why we should
be watching it, not even the
makers, just as no one can
tell you why we should read
Rooney’s books.
On ITV there was Tom
Cruise and “500 horses” trying
desperately to please the
Queen. The star had arrived,
all trussed up with whatlooked like a brand-new wig,
to present one segment of a
Platinum Jubilee special of
the Royal Windsor Horse show.
I will say that Cruise seemed
far more at home declaiming
about the “United Kingdom”
than any of the whinnying old
British comperes, among
them Damian Lewis and the
“national trinket” Alan
Titchmarsh. As the hundreds
of horses and performers
cantered out like old laundry
flung in every direction, the
shiny old queen appeared to
be lapping it up. And, you
know, I think Elizabeth II
enjoyed it as well.
The point of this exercise
was to kick off the jubilee
celebrations with a series of
stunning military displays and
dances. What wasn’t cloying,
hushed sycophancy — “What
a moment”, “It’s wonderful”
etc etc — was snippets of
bonkers royal/military
microdetail such as: “Their
mascot is a real-life penguin
who lives in Edinburgh Zoo.”girls inhabit some
extraordinary, louche,
literary milieu that’s
constantly creating,
but I found myself
wondering why
someone as
charismatic and
clever as Melissa
would bother
with these boring,
lumpy girls.The only thing I cared about in the new
Sally Rooney adaptation was the house
It has such
memorable
dialogue as,
‘Hi.’ ‘Hi.’ ‘Hi.’
‘Hiiii.’ ‘Hi.’ I
find it funny
Lacking depth Joe Alwyn,
Sasha Lane, top, Jemima
Kirke, right, and Alison OliverCAMILLA
LONG
12 22 May 2022