She sells Frances’ uncertainty and has good chemistry with those around her. On the exterior she appears plain and straightforward but keeps us constantly aware of how complex Frances is on the inside. Oliver sells Frances’ quiet but opinionated nature with perfect balance. Throughout, the casting and performances are strong. These feed well into both Frances as a character and also the story overall adding a rounded depth to the series.
Intertwined with this main narrative are sub-plots regarding Frances’ relationship with her father and problems with her own health. The evolution of Frances and Nick’s relationship is the main power behind the story, giving both them and other characters an exceptionally hard time and putting their already precarious relationships to the test. As a result, a slightly awkward love-square (or perhaps a love-rhombus?) forms. Frances and Nick, rather more quietly, do the same. Melissa and Bobbi hit it off straight away, having strong conversations and actively striding into a friendship with ease. Things get tricky when Frances and Bobbi meet Melissa (Jemima Kirke) and Nick (Joe Alwyn), both in their thirties, married, Melissa a writer, Nick an actor. This relationship is well summed up in their poetry performances Frances does the writing and Bobbi (mostly) does the performing. This is in stark contrast to Bobbi (Sasha Lane), Frances’ ex and now close friend, who usually goes right ahead and says exactly what she’s thinking. She’s not a recluse, but she thinks an awful lot more than she says. The story follows Frances (Alison Oliver), a student in her early twenties with a sophisticated mistrust for capitalism and a generally internal nature which leaves her accidentally cold to most of those around her. Yet, despite receiving such a similar treatment, somewhere along the way Conversations with Friends stumbles off the trail. Brilliantly shot, and with the perfect soundtrack to match, it was an adaptation quite like no other. The story brimmed with a tension that always resisted the urge to become obnoxious and the cast delivered their parts with such understanding and precision that it became tricky to remember someone had just yelled the word ‘action’. Either way, Normal People remains an electric show. Maybe it was the story? Maybe it was the cast? Maybe it was the fact that watching normal life is unusually thrilling when your current normality consists of nothing more than a commute from your bed to your desk and back again (with a break at 5pm to watch a shoddy government PowerPoint, of course). Like so many others, I joined the ‘Sally Rooney Fan Club’ back in 2020 after Normal People began competing with covid in the race to take over the world.
Somewhere along the way Conversations with Friends stumbles off the trail Unfortunately, as we all know, it so rarely does. With the same writers, directors, and production team back to put the pages on the screen, I’ve been anxiously waiting to see if lightning could strike twice. After the smash hit of Normal People two years ago, Conversations with Friends is BBC Three’s new Sally Rooney adaptation.
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