It is a truth universally acknowledged – at least among people of a certain age and socio-economic demographic – that Conversations with Friends is Sally Rooney’s best novel, a debut superior to its acclaimed follow-up, Normal People. So it’s no surprise to find the BBC returning to the territory that made 2020’s Normal People one of the first true hits of lockdown, a Tiger King for the generation gleefully squandering their mortgage money on turmeric lattes. Conversations with Friends revisits the formula so faithfully that even the absence of any narrative continuity cannot prevent this feeling like a sequel.
Conversations with Friends follows the tangled lives of Frances (newcomer Alison Oliver) and Bobbi (American Honey’s Sasha Lane), who are best friends, ex-lovers, and, to their eternal shame, performance poets. “You’re quite intense together,” Nick (The Favourite’s Joe Alwyn) observes, after the duo are roped into dinner by his wife Melissa (Girls’ Jemima Kirke). Nick and Melissa, an actor and writer respectively, become sources of fixation for the girls. Frances develops an all-consuming, and very much requited, crush on Nick, while Bobbi drifts along in flirtatious repartee with Melissa. “Can you actually imagine them on their own?” questions Bobbi, as she and Frances come steamrolling into this marriage.
