About 90 seconds into the third series of Starstruck, it becomes clear that Rose Matafeo’s rom-sitcom has a major problem. The action picks up precisely where we left off at the end of the second series, namely a snogging sesh in the middle of a big pond, as Matafeo’s Jessie finally gets (back) together with her on-off love interest, film star Tom Kapoor, with whom she had a one-night stand in the show’s first episode. Cue a pacy montage charting the giddy highs, then inescapable lows, of their relationship, before Tom walks out of their shared home for good.
When we rejoin her two years later, Jessie seems largely over it. But Tom’s departure has had an existential impact on the show itself: surely we must now also wave goodbye to the titular conceit – whether the normal girl and the famous guy can ever make it work – too? (Starstruck is essentially a gender-swapped Notting Hill, with a more realistic grasp of London property prices.) Yet the show, initially at least, isn’t quite ready to let go of its central gimmick, which means it spends its third outing raking over the embers of the romance, from genuine attempts to move on with new people to tentative reconnection.
