When “Starstruck” premiered on HBO Max last June, I likened it to “Notting Hill” for millennials, about a quippy Londoner named Jessie working two dead-end jobs and staring down her 30s (the thrillingly funny Rose Matafeo, also the show’s creator) who forges an unlikely romance with a famous movie star named Tom (Nikesh Patel, somehow both dashing and down-to-earth). A small show with a big, effusive performance at its center from Matafeo, it was as fizzy and binge-able as they come, with Jessie making a dramatic, last-minute decision, canceling her plans to move back to her native New Zealand and staying in London to see if she and Tom can make a go of it.
Season 2 picks up moments later, with both Jessie and Tom briefly stunned into silence by her grand gesture, before she proceeds to freak out, rehashing the same insecurities that sapped so much of her joie de vivre in Season 1: “You’re embarrassed of me,” she says to him at one point and — sigh — they already had this same conversation last year.
It’s such a confounding decision and a misfire to keep the show stuck in place, spinning its wheels, rather than pushing the story forward. I had hoped that Matafeo and writing partner Alice Snedden would finally tackle the nuances of what it’s like for a non-celebrity, scraping by financially and with no real professional ambitions to speak of, who finds herself in a serious relationship with someone mega-famous and wealthy. How does that work — or not work? My issue with the new season is the way it stymies this kind of question in favor of repeating (and exacerbating) many of the previous season’s weaknesses. Jessie and Tom get together, only to break up, only to get back together again. Haven’t we already been here? Are there not new dilemmas from which to mine comedy?
