Conversations with Friends

Conversations with Friends is a 12-episode miniseries on Hulu based on the debut novel from beloved contemporary adult author Sally Rooney. This series was ordered following the success of Normal People, also a 12-episode Hulu adaptation of Rooney’s 2nd novel, released in the height of the pandemic in April 2020. Lenny Abrahamson returns to direct this series as well, bringing his ethereal, poetic, and naturalistic style once again. Only this time, his style cannot save a series marred by miscastings and a sluggishly paced script.

The series follows the entwined lives of college students and best friends/exes Frances and Bobbi, played by Alison Oliver and Sasha Lane, and successful married couple Melissa and Nick, played by Jemima Kirke and Joe Alwyn. Melissa, an author in her 30s, takes notice of Frances and Bobbi when watching them perform their spoken word poetry at a showcase, and from there a friendship forms. Bobbi and Melissa take a clear liking to each other, while Frances immediately develops a huge crush on Melissa’s actor husband Nick. The feeling is reciprocated, and they begin an affair. Their affair is the primary storyline of the series, which is unfortunate considering Melissa and Bobbi have double the chemistry and charisma.

Frances and Nick are both very quiet, inexpressive, and extremely bland. It’s fine to be a person of few words, you either are that person or you know that person, but to make up for such little dialogue, the series needed actors who had powerful, palpable chemistry, and an ability to convey multitudes through their expressions and body language. These actors have approximately zero chemistry. None, nada, negative, zilch. The passion, lust, and fire we are supposed to feel between them are nonexistent.

We barely hear Frances speak, and she’s the protagonist. You can write a socially awkward and shy character but still allow them to articulate their thoughts through other means, but this isn’t the case here. It gets increasingly frustrating watching this person we are supposed to be identifying with just refuse to communicate; she’s so short with people that it often comes off hurtful and rude. It quickly becomes grating and just impossible to sympathize with her. At one point, she gets upset with Melissa for accidentally revealing to Bobbi that a story she’d written was about her. The catch is that she really has no place to be upset with Melissa - she’s entered an affair with Melissa’s husband, Melissa is allowing it, yet she treats Melissa with disdain. The entitlement is just insufferable.

Joe Alwyn's miscasting as Nick in particular pretty much derails this entire thing. It's essentially 6 hours of watching a baby-faced 29-year old who looks 25 give his best impression of a grizzly 40-year-old man (not sure why he was striving so hard to seem middle-aged when I believe Nick is supposed to be 32?) even going full Chuck Bass/Darth Vader with his voice, in what seems like a combined attempt to hide his pretty much nonexistent rendition of an Irish accent and to seem older. It’s painful to watch and to listen to, and one of the more glaring miscasts I’ve seen in a while.

Jemima Kirke and Sasha Lane are the MVP’s of the series, carrying these 12 episodes on their backs, bringing all the believability and depth missing from the central romance between Frances and Nick. They are both essentially the other side of the coin to Frances and Nick, the extroverted and outgoing ones in their relationships with the former. They are also far more interesting and dynamic - I found myself consistently wishing we were seeing their interactions instead of Nick and Frances’, but they are sidelined for their affair, and treated poorly by the protagonists we’re meant to root for.

The pacing is also a major problem. This series is entirely too long, and I’m not sure why anyone thought 12 episodes were needed to tell this story. If it was cut down to 8, or even 6, episodes, that also could have helped the plot feel a bit more powerful and high intensity. Instead, we have so much meandering time spent in the world of Frances, as she navigates through life with little to no regard for the feelings of those around her, with major “poor me, I’m the victim despite the fact that I’m in an affair with a married man” energy. I’m curious how she comes across in the novel and whether this is some sort of gross mistranslation of her character due to the acting and writing.

Ultimately, you can feel how much this series tried to follow the formula of Normal People’s success, and it quickly becomes evident that it will not work. You can't replicate the success of something that just has a much, much better story and script, with two leads who are impeccably cast with electric chemistry. This series is a grade-A example of how crucial chemistry is when it’s the entire crux of the story. This was a misfire in many directions, and while Abraham’s direction along with Kirke and Lane’s performances pull a great deal of heavy lifting, they can’t save this mess. The series hinges too greatly on the storyline between Frances and Nick, who are unfortunately vanilla personified.