There’s a conversation that bubbles up every so often about the absence of sex scenes in contemporary film: Why is everything so chaste on screen? It’s true that Hollywood is making fewer movies about adult relationships at the moment, but it’s not hard to find serious-minded TV that is filling the gap. “Conversations with Friends,” the 12-part Hulu-BBC coproduction adapted from Irish writer Sally Rooney’s bestselling 2017 novel, puts carnal desires at its center, as well as the more contemplative complications that arise once everyone puts their clothes back on.
Frances (Alison Oliver) and Bobbi (Sasha Lane) are students at Trinity College Dublin. Once a romantic item, they are now platonic but remain inseparable. They perform spoken word poetry together in small clubs and it’s unclear if we’re meant to think they’re any good or not (I’m coming down on the side of “not”). As a pair, they are a study in opposites: Frances can be elusive and ill-at-ease, Bobbi is the self-assured force of nature who’s also sometimes full of baloney.
One night, they meet a glamorous and urbane writer named Melissa (Jemima Kirke, of “Girls” fame) who looks to be a good 15 years older. She invites these soon-to-be college seniors into her orbit, which includes her husband, a shy but semifamous actor named Nick (Joe Alwyn, the longtime romantic partner of Taylor Swift, for those who care about such things). Nick is handsome and awkward and, it quickly becomes apparent, more than a little interested in Frances. The feeling is mutual and it’s as if they’ve suddenly found their stumbling, fumbling misfit counterpart. They throw caution to the wind, consummate their flirtation in secret and things get complicated from there.
