Nikesh Pate and Rose Matafeo in Starstruck
(Picture: BBC/Avalon UK/Shamil Tanna)She didn’t get on the plane! The second series of Starstruck - the six-part BBC Three drama, co-written and starring the brilliant New Zealand comic Rose Matafeo - begins moments after the first one ended, with Jessie (Matafeo) having decided not to get on a plane back to New Zealand for good, and instead to stay in London and give it a go with Tom Kapoor (the still-dreamy Nikesh Patel). It’s a beautiful moment - albeit momentarily. “I was going to watch Dunkirk on the plane,” she shrieks, realising the full momentousness of what she’s done. “And I guess I just never watch Dunkirk now!” Obviously, she also left her bags on the bus to the airport.
If you weren’t one of the many, many people who watched series one - it has been streamed almost five million times on iPlayer, making it BBC Three’s biggest comedy of last year - a quick recap. Jessie is your archetypal screwball rom-com heroine; “kooky”, Tom tries to call her, cuing up a level ten Jessie meltdown. She lives with her best friend, Kate (Emma Sidi) in Hackney, works in a cinema, messes up frequently and spends plenty of time “in a shame spiral about my life in general”.
