Tensions were high when Netflix announced a One Day TV series back in 2021. David Nicholls’ bestselling 2009 romance novel had already been butchered with an Anne Hathaway-led film just a decade earlier as far as most fans were concerned. Could another adaptation save its legacy? Or, considering this is the streamer that can so easily destroy a classic (Persuasion, All the Light We Cannot See), was this the final chop?
Two binge watches, hours of ugly blubbering and a “who is Leo Woodall dating?” Google search later, there was no need to worry. Just a few weeks after its release, One Day is the site’s second biggest show of the year so far, the critics adored it and you have most likely already gobbled up all 14 episodes (otherwise, what the hell are you even making small talk about?).
The fandom’s spark has been rekindled, catapulting the novel back into the bestseller charts. But what is it that the TV show has got so right? Where did the film go so wrong? In fact, was it – and I might be asking this through tiny rose-tinted, circular 90s sunglasses – even as bad as we remember?
For the rare uninitiated, the story starts in 1988 with two students who spend the night together after their graduation in Edinburgh. Dexter Mayhew is posh, popular, pretty and a bit of an idiot, while Emma Morley is a smart, sarcastic, socialist from up north. They do not have sex, but they start an unlikely friendship, and we revisit them for the next two decades on the anniversary of their meeting: 15 July, St Swithin’s Day.
Perhaps unfairly, Hathaway has always been the first thing to blame in the film. Considering how much of a point is made of Emma Morley being from Leeds, casting Hollywood Hathaway is a bit like casting Austin Butler in a Kes remake. Despite watching Emmerdale as research, the accent was not good. (That said, whatever the accent, something about Hathaway describing her first London flat smelling like “onions and disappointment” is very funny.) Beyond that, there was also the whole unconvincing “let’s give Hathaway bushy hair and glasses so that she’s more ‘normal’” thing – see also The Princess Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada.
But crikey! We must not let Jim Sturgess off the hook, whose posh flopping around and sighing barely left a dent in our hearts. Oh, you totally forgot that’s who played Dexter Mayhew first time round? Case closed.
Points must be awarded for Patricia Clarkson as Dex’s fabulous mother, and Romola Garai as his “what is a joke?” girlfriend Sylvie, though: perfection.
In Hathaway and Sturgess’s defence, the film’s real problem was time. Director Lone Scherfig managed to squeeze the key scenes into 148 minutes – rubbing in the suncream on the beach, that “those who can’t, teach” line over dinner. But this is the slowest burning romance on record. It takes 20 years to get it on – an almost lethal case of sexual tension. That first night the chalk-and-cheese pair meet is crucial. But within five minutes, Dex goes back to Emma’s when everyone else has gone home after the lamest looking graduation ever because “yeah, might as well”, they have a brief hot fumble, a Tracy Chapman tape puts him off and they just become friends.
The TV series looked and learned.
It cracked the casting with emerging British stars. Woodall is far from dead behind the eyes as Dex (they sparkle), and gives very good “arse off the telly”, while also being devastating as he breaks down on a payphone. Ambika Mod, meanwhile, is a master of Emma’s insecure but sharp self-deprecation. This authenticity might be explained with the significance of her casting in the first place – she has talked about not feeling good enough for the role because she grew up being told “brown women aren’t the standard of beauty”.
When the two bump into each other at the graduation – a banging party that you actually want to down a pint at – they actually share “a moment”. Back at hers, there’s negging. There’s teasing. There’s awkward silences. They don’t have sex because she is gobby but so nervous. The chemistry doesn’t sizzle, it’s instead built on intrigue and difference – which I think is the point. As the sunlight slowly pours in to end a night they don’t want to end, Emma says the sound of blackbirds makes her feel anxious because it’s “like I’ve done something I regret”. “That’s why I love it,” smirks Dexter. Oof. I’m in.
This is what happens when each year is allowed to breathe and become believable. Emma’s scenes in her travelling theatre group are not only hilarious (“My left or stage left?” her amateur director boyfriend asks while fingering her in the van), but set her up as a somebody who will one day become a children’s book writer. And her friendship with Tilly – which is one of mere convenience and for punchlines in the film – is so lovely that it provides some of the most teary moments (that wedding speech!).
There are all the finer details that make it, too: Dexter with a fag hanging from his lip in every other scene. The excruciating moment Dex spots Emma checking him out in the shower on holiday (you can feel her horror)! The nostalgic soundtrack you want to dance and sob to afterward.
It’s a novel that was destined to be a perfect streaming series, really. The film scratched an itch (come on, we all still guiltily watched it). But Hathaway has an Oscar, not Bernard’s watch. And we just want all of Emma and Dex’s days.
