Rare is the television show — or any filmed entertainment, really — that can capture the euphoria of young love and the heartache of grief with equal grace. One Day, the new romance series on Netflix, manages to do this and a lot more. Spanning 14 episodes of varying length, it follows two characters — the effervescent Emma and the dashing Dex — across two decades filled with joys and sorrows, small victories and earth-shattering losses. It’s woozy and whimsical, but also poetic and profound. In its own way, One Day might just be the perfect television show.
Emma and Dex meet for the first time at their university grad party, young adults on the cusp of new adventures. He’s the heartthrob on campus, his strut betraying an old-money background. But she’s more cynical, hailing as she does from the working class town of Leeds. Being noticed by Dex is perhaps the biggest form of validation that any girl at uni could receive, and when he singles Emma out on their last day together, she can’t help but feel slightly suspicious. She isn’t the type he usually goes after. But possessed by a YOLO-esque spirit that predates the coinage of that term, she indulges him.
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What unfolds is a first episode so Before Sunrise-coded that Richard Linklater could either blush with gratitude or contemplate legal action. Unlike Celine and Jesse, however, Emma and Dex always keep things platonic, choosing conversation over copulation even as they part ways. But they make enough of an emotional connection to promise each other that they’ll stay in touch.
Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall in a still from One Day. (Photo: Netflix)
One Day checks in on them once a year, every year, from 1988 to 2007. At first, the date — July 15 — feels entirely random. But those familiar with David Nicholls’ source novel, or even its mostly forgotten film adaptation, would understand its ultimately tragic significance. Played by Ambika Mod, Emma is the more philosophical of the two, although the laid-back Dex, played by Leo Woodall, might categorise her as an over-thinker. There’s idealism in her eyes when she tells him on their first date that she wants to ‘change the world’, and when she highlights her favourite line from Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles — a casual aside about a day that lies ‘sly and unseen’, waiting to pounce on unsuspecting souls.
The show’s snapshot structure underlines Emma and Dex’s evolution, even though several important life events happen off screen. Some years after graduation, Emma abandons her dreams of becoming a writer and settles for a job at the ‘second-worst Mexican restaurant in all of the UK’, while Dex stumbles into a gig as a television presenter and becomes an insufferable minor celebrity. It alters their perspectives about each other, and themselves. Insecurity begins to creep into the picture, as does arrogance and hopelessness. They meet other people, develop full lives, but even though they’re always in touch, their ships never seem to pass when they’re single.
The show conveys the passage of time mainly through the soundtrack and the occasional introduction of new tech — it’s funny how dismissive Emma is of mobile phones initially — but also through Woodall and Mod’s finely tuned performances. Their chemistry remains as startling as always — regardless of whether it’s the 1980s or the 2000s — but both stars make precise adjustments to their acting as Emma and Dex mature. Mod smoothens out some of Emma’s edges as the story progresses, but never at the cost of her wit. Woodall, on the other hand, develops into a more tragic figure as time goes by.
Somewhat curiously, however, One Day never makes any references to historical events, which is an astute choice, because it lends the show a certain fairytale quality — it’s as if Emma and Dex exist in a world far removed from our own. For instance, the show never gives us its version of that classic episode of Californication, in which the death of Kurt Cobain reshapes Hank and Karen’s relationship. Although, coincidentally, the overarching love story in One Day is quite similar to theirs.
Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall in a still from One Day. (Photo: Netflix)
It would, however, be slightly reductive to describe this as a will-they-won’t-they set-up; One Day isn’t a sitcom, it’s a doomed romance of Titanic proportions. While both Emma and Dex feature in each episode — the show also takes them overseas, across Europe — they don’t always have equal screen time. We learn more about his family background, for instance, than hers. And the later episodes tend to skew considerably in Dex’s direction.
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Through these brief time capsules, the series captures just how cruel life can be. Seemingly minor decisions can have repercussions of massive magnitude. What if Dex hadn’t approached Emma that day at all? What if Emma had turned down his advances? What if… There is no bigger question that a romantic drama can inspire in the audience’s minds — it’s true of the genre’s best modern classics, La La Land, About Time and Mr Nobody. And One Day, warts and all, deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as them.
One Day
Cast – Ambika Mod, Leo Woodall, Eleanor Tomlinson, Essie Davis
Rating – 5/5
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