Don’t be fooled by the breezy, Richard Curtis-like stylings of You & Me. This sentimental charmer, executive-produced by Russell T Davies, may look like a romcom, but it’s more David Nicholls’ One Day than Notting Hill. This is a drama about tragedy, and whether hearts can survive the potential horrors that life may throw at them. “After the worst, most unimaginable thing has happened to them, do you really think people can be happy again, the way they were before?” asks up-and-coming theatrical star Emma (Jessica Barden). The answer plays itself out over three episodes, which twist, turn and pivot across two-ish timelines and several years.
At its best, it’s got a touch of Cold Feet to it. Industry’s Harry Lawtey plays Ben, a carefree young man in London whose life is changed for ever when he misses a bus at the exact same time as stranger Jess (Sophia Brown). For the first 20 minutes or so, it plays out like the romcom that it is pretending to be. The meet-cute is intensely cute, and there is plenty of lovely magical thinking going on. Strangers daring to strike up conversations with one another! In London! At a bus stop! (In You & Me, buses are romantic, which suggests the writer has blocked out any memories of dodging a rolling bottle full of something that looks a bit like apple juice on the 76 at 3am.) Ben is a journalist whose mother is a cleaner, yet he can afford a two-bedroom flat in the city that doesn’t have a shower in the kitchen and a fridge/wardrobe combo! Being a parent of small children doesn’t seem to age anyone at all! I like this London, all sun-kissed and optimistic and friendly and affordable.
The fairytale quickly sours, though, and this becomes a sympathetic and original take on surviving loss and navigating grief. If that doesn’t sound like a laugh a minute, well, it isn’t, but it does handle its burden with a surprisingly easy grip. It jumps between time periods, crossing eight years, showing the before, during and after of that “worst, most unimaginable thing”, not only for Ben, but from episode two, for Emma, as well.
Emma is a young actor who is about to star in a much-hyped new play, fulfilling her wildest dreams. But she, too, is carrying a heavy load, and Barden plays her as if she has been dropped in from another planet. When Ben turns up to interview her for a column about rising stars, they find that they have more in common than they expected. The way in which their stories are destined to intertwine is far from straightforward.
There is a lot to like here. Lawtey, who has the ring of a young Jude Law, is a winning lead and pulls off the seemingly impossible feat of portraying a likable journalist on TV. (Almost as impressive as making an investment banker seem human in Industry.) His mother, played by the predictably warm Julie Hesmondhalgh, doesn’t appear often enough, but when she does, she is a sage and soothing presence, and gives the series extra heart. Split timelines have become a TV cliche and don’t always land but, here, there is a clear division between the sunny before times and the grey-washed devastation of what came next. It suits what the show is trying to do. There is a deftness to the writing that keeps you guessing as to what could have caused the “devastation” that Ben speaks of so early on, as he slumps, alone, at a bus stop.
It doesn’t hang about. There is much to be said for its ability to roll up its sleeves and get on with the plot. More action takes place in the first half-an-hour than in a normal week’s worth of EastEnders’ episodes. It dares to take on themes that go deeper than it suggests it might. Jess is from a religious background, while Ben is not, and while the question of faith is not a big feature, it is there, and it adds soul. It indirectly asks a vast and important question about death, too: quick and sudden, or slow and lingering? Which is the most bearable, and for whom?
This is a case of diminishing returns, though. Its first episode is its strongest by far and it sets a high bar that it never quite reaches again, even if its final episode, which aims to tear through the romcom classics, does come close. It has a tendency towards staginess, and its big emotional moments sometimes lose their momentum in long, poetic speeches, delivered with a Bafta-hunger in the eyes. But at the same time, You & Me is warm and sweet, and it’s hard to deny the appeal of its big, healing heart.
You & Me is on ITVX now.
