I’ve been palpitating with excitement at the thought of the upcoming Netflix adaptation of One Day. This is partly because when I first read David Nicholls' book in 2009, I was gripped by the same mania for it as everyone else – a mania that pushed it to million-copy-mega-bestseller status within just a year or so of its publication.
That summer it was the book everyone talked about, recommended and read on the tube – I was newly graduated and interning at Vogue where one of the editors told me that you were nobody unless you travelled with a copy of One Day tucked under your arm.
It was a cultural phenomenon and I read my copy very ostentatiously every lunchtime in Hanover Square (RIP Vogue House). Like everyone, I loved its warmth and humour – it was a compulsive, easygoing read that still managed to break your heart. Perfection.
The 2011 film adaptation, directed by Lone Scherfig and starring Anne Hathaway (and her faux-Leeds accent in a supporting role) simply didn’t do it justice. And so, when it emerged that Netflix was giving it a full 14-part reboot, with Ambika Mod (excellent as Shruti in This Is Going to Hurt) and Leo Woodall (excellent as Jack in White Lotus season 2) playing Emma and Dexter, I was excited to have Nicholls tug at my heartstrings again.
For those unfamiliar with the premise (sorry, what rock were you living under in 2009?), we join two characters – Emma and Dexter – on the day they meet, at their university graduation ball in Edinburgh then on the same day (St Swithin’s Day) each year for 20 years.
The series succeeds in doing justice to this narrative trick where the film, for obvious reasons, simply rattled too fast through the years to make it land. In this adaptation we are able to follow the characters as their youthful idealism is slowly eroded by the petty disappointments of adult life.
Emma, who dreams of changing the world through her writing, ends up working in Loco Caliente, a greasy Tex-Mex restaurant she describes as a “graveyard of ambition”; meanwhile Dexter, who initially finds success as a TV presenter, derails spectacularly due to booze and drugs. Each scene has the oversaturated intimacy of a snapshot taken on a disposable camera – a testament to Molly Manners’ directing talent.
Whether this adaptation is as good as the book is perhaps the wrong question to ask – though, for the curious, it definitely is. A better question might be, is the book as good as we remember it? And the conclusion I came to at the end of the series is that it probably isn’t.
What at 21 I found enchanting, at 35 I found a little shlocky and try-hard. The ‘banter’ between the two leads – and really for the first third of the series this is a relationship based almost entirely on banter – doesn’t always land and too often Emma (who I remember from the book as sparky and sarcastic, but never mean), comes across as imperious and unlikeable.
Where are all her zinging one-liners? Is it possible they were never there in the source material? Was I just too easily amused? This creates a problem for the rest of the narrative – a problem which is never completely resolved – as I struggled to understand why they’d bother keeping in touch.
Ultimately, Emma and Dexter’s attraction is the crux of One Day – they are two people who gravitate towards one another despite physical, intellectual and even ideological distance. In the series, I didn’t always buy it – and I suspect, were I to read the book again, I might come to the same conclusion.
Separately both Mod and Woodall are wonderfully watchable. Emma’s relationship with waiter/comedian Ian (a brilliant Jonny Weldon) feels true and doomed and very funny, while Dexter’s drug and ego-fuelled decline is almost too cringe-inducing to bear.
Together though, their chemistry is always a little…off. The series will no doubt make Woodall a pin-up – much as Normal People did for Paul Mescal. In fact, I suspect the internet thirst for Woodall (who is charm personified, even when he’s playing obnoxious), may even see him surpass Mescal.
Despite its flaws, it would be po-faced to not give this gorgeous, cleverer than most, rom-com its due; it is a perfect, sunny watch for gloomy February which builds up enough emotional weight so that, despite knowing the storyline, I still cried at all the necessary moments.
