The question “will they or won’t they?” permeates many romantic stories, and it is almost always answered with “they do eventually”. In the four-part Irish-Australian drama Mix Tape, that evergreen question is still there, more or less, but it has been deepened and expanded in interesting ways. It’s not really about whether Alison and Dan will get together because we know they already did – one of the show’s two distinctly different timelines follows them as lovestruck teenagers in the 1980s.
But the other timeline, set in the present day, reveals Alison and Dan went their separate ways and haven’t seen each other for many years. There’s the possibility they might get back together, despite each being married with children to other people. But for me, it was more interesting to contemplate whether either of them could finally find healing and closure for their deeply unresolved feelings. The past is a lonely place, as they say, and it has left big sandbags weighing down their minds.
