The TV version of Sally Rooney’s Normal People became one of the runaway hits of the Covid era, winning more than 60m views with its setback-strewn tale of modern love. So there was no small excitement about its follow-up, an adaptation of the novel that introduced Rooney as a new literary star. While Normal People told a relatively simple story of the on-off relationship between two schoolmates, whose furtive love affair is rekindled when they meet up again as students, Conversations With Friends spins a messier and more complicated yarn, which, perhaps inevitably, has had a more mixed reception since it hit screens last week.
Age, class and differing sexualities intertwine in the relationship of two couples, one a decade older than the other, who meet through a spoken-word poetry gig, and go on to form an asymmetrical foursome. The older pair, writer Melissa (Jemima Kirke) and jobbing actor Nick (Joe Alwyn), are locked in an affectionate but apparently sexless marriage. The younger two, Frances (Alison Oliver) and Bobbi (Sasha Lane), used to be lovers. “I’m her muse,” says gobby Bobbi, by way of introduction to the sleek, older essayist. “We dropped the fucking and kept the poetry.”
