Television Review

Normal People (2020, BBC/Hulu)

Marianne and Connell, two people from different backgrounds but who live in the same Irish town, weave in and out of each other’s romantic lives.

As frustrating as Connell and Marianne’s communication breakdowns are in Sally Rooney’s 2018 sophomore novel Normal People, seeing them played out on television doesn’t feel as exasperating. However, the story truly comes to life and becomes a lot more heartbreaking on screen.

But hang on. Saying it was frustrating isn’t a criticism. It’s also satisfying in equal measure. Rooney’s second book portrayed the ins and outs of a clumsy but endearing first love and, naturally, so does its recent TV adaptation.

Along their journey into adulthood, Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal) frequently drift apart and get back together again. The unlikely pair begin as classmates in a secondary school of a small fictional town in County Sligo, Ireland, and both end up studying at Trinity College Dublin.

While they’re both in the same school year, their backgrounds are markedly different. Marianne grew up in a well-to-do family, her mother regards her with contempt, and her brother is essentially an abusive bully. Connell’s mother, on the other hand, is a young, single mum who works as a part-time cleaner at Marianne’s house. And although the topic of their social statuses only comes up once in conversation, the differences are more than apparent in both the novel and series. You can see it from the distinct approaches they each have towards the university grants they receive to their differing levels of popularity at school and in town.

Marianne doesn’t seem to be bothered about her lack of popularity. Her classmates see her as a bit of a weirdo and she couldn’t care less about conforming to their standards. But she’s clever and speaks her mind. Although she isn’t as much of an introvert as Connell is, she generally keeps to herself both at school and at home. When she starts her studies at Trinity College we can see that this is mostly due to the fact she hasn’t grown up in the appropriate environment for her to make friends.

Connell, on his part, is much luckier in terms of his family. He lives with his caring and loving mother, Lorraine (Sarah Greene), who is very much the moral compass of the story. She gives him plenty of space but is quick to reprimand him when he oversteps the line. Lorraine soon learns Connell is keeping his relationship with Marianne a secret, while not even talking to her in public. And, on top of that, he’s asked, not Marianne, but Rachel out to the Debs. Lorraine lets her son know she’s disappointed (“I think you’re a disgrace and I’m ashamed of you”) and leaves the car before she says something she might regret. As a strong parent and a compassionate person, she chooses to moderate her language and control her behaviour to avoid hurting Connell.

She clearly has an affinity for Marianne. She feels her pain and shows her love and kindness. And while she also loves her son very much, she knows to take somebody else’s side when the situation calls for it. Lorraine’s a beacon of good and kindness in the story.

Returning to the social positions each of the characters occupy, Connell doesn’t have as much of a safety net as Marianne. So he’s careful about risking the position he has in his community. He often remains silent instead of speaking up in front of friends, who sometimes engage in morally dubious actions. “They’re my friends, it’s different for you.”

Marianne, on the other hand, has no intention of playing up to other people to gain popularity, and others seem to push her down and belittle her while they’re still in a position to do so — i.e. before her socioeconomic status will give Marianne the upper hand in life.

Social class plays a big part in the characters’ experiences and interactions. The class divide between Connell and Marianne inevitably conditions their relationship and it is something they can never truly escape.

One thing that unites the two is that they’re each lonely in their own unique ways. Connell doesn’t let on that he likes to read for fear of his friends looking down on him. He never truly opens up and connects with anyone — until he meets Marianne, that is. Marianne has always been the object of dislike and derision at school. Connell’s friends call her ugly to her face, even though, behind her back they do, in fact, admit she’s pretty.

Connell’s attitude, stemming from his personal insecurities, drives the two apart before they start college. And at college, their social roles change. Marianne fits in fairly well with the middle-class atmosphere of Trinity College and manages to successfully make friends. But Connell — despite discovering new-found praise for his intelligence and skills in writing — feels lonelier than ever. The fact that he doesn’t click with the snobbish and superficial people he encounters doesn’t help one bit.

During most of their time at college, they’re not officially romantically involved and Marianne ends up having a number of shallow relationships with a couple of somewhat pretentious and frankly nasty characters.

In fact, one of these relationships isn’t romantic at all. On her Erasmus year in Sweden, Marianne finds herself drawn to Lukas (Lancelot Ncube), a local boy paving his way as a professional photographer. She explicitly tells him she doesn’t want to be loved, only insulted. And although the sexual activities they engage in seem consensual to begin with, we soon realise she’s thoroughly unhappy and Lukas doesn’t care about her at all. Being with Connell helped her massively with her low self-esteem at school and after working on it so hard it seems like in Sweden it’s all beginning to unravel. But the new relationships Marianne and Connell embark on are really only minor events played out in the wider context of our two protagonists’ long-lasting bond.

Sally Rooney’s story deals with all the small failures and the monumental misunderstandings associated with our teenage years. But it also deals with human relationships more generally. It addresses themes of mental health, depression, and suicide from a healthy, constructive perspective. It normalises the idea of consensual, safe and kind sex. For instance, during their first scene in bed, Connell asks Marianne if she’s comfortable and he tells her it won’t be awkward if she wants to stop. At one point, before Marianne’s departure on her year studying abroad, they even discuss the politics of sending nudes.

During the time they’re seeing each other at school, Connell’s behaviour towards Marianne is pretty reprehensible. He’s worried about how his mates might think of him if they found out about his burgeoning romantic and sexual relationship with the unpopular girl. When he finds out that his friends and classmates actually knew that the two were seeing each other it is too late. The others never really cared about it at all, because, as we all learn when we become adults, people are too preoccupied with their own problems.

Although Connell doesn’t fully realise and acknowledge the mistake he made until the two meet again at university, Connell’s apology is sincere. Unlike other guys in Marianne’s life, he’s not a bad person. And, luckily for him, Marianne is immensely forgiving.

In terms of mental health, at university, Connell shows strong feelings of guilt after one of his school friends dies by suicide. He tells himself that he could have done more to avoid his friend taking his own life and he becomes depressed. The feelings of guilt he has largely stem from the fact that he distanced himself from his friends. As, at university, he realises he has no deep connection or anything much in common with his mates from school.

For a book that relies heavily on the narrator having direct access to what the characters are thinking, the TV show has proved a success. Some expected the adaptation to come in the form of a movie, but as a book with no straight-forward or conventional plot, packing every nuance of the story into a two-hour feature would likely have been frustrating. It’s the little moments, the nuance, the thoughts and details that make Normal People so special.

Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal have incredible chemistry and their ability to bring Rooney’s story to life through the small details — a glance, an eyelid closing, a precise hand gesture — is second to none. These minutiae can become almost overwhelming when you begin to analyse them. Compared with the book, the representation of emotions becomes much stronger through the actors’ raw, brilliant performance.

The story focuses on the two protagonists and a lot of scenes revolve around the pair and not much else. There’s an abundance of close shots and simple scenes set in bedrooms, corridors, cars, and other closed settings. The way it’s shot is beautiful and the attention is almost always overwhelmingly on Edgar-Jones and Mescal’s performances. The fact that the team behind this were able to make a seemingly simple set so captivating for audiences really is worthy of great merit.

22-year-old Daisy Edgar-Jones is a young star in the making and this is only her first major role, while 24-year-old Paul Mescal is best-known for his theatre work, so this is his first TV role. The pair of them are flawless.

Normal People has been lauded for portraying sexual relationships amongst young people in a true and honest light. Saying the twelve-part series is explicit or graphic sounds wrong. The sex is plentiful but in no way gratuitous. Some describe it as “frank”. But more than that, it feels real and (unlike the generic frolicking regularly shown on TV) it’s able to reflect the uniqueness of Connell and Marianne’s bond. The scenes are not glamorised in any way. They’re sincere and intimate scenes with added tenderness and vulnerability. It also would have been impossible to leave sex out of the series because it’s such a crucial aspect of the characters’ relationship.

But for those expecting a happy ending, the finale is regrettably, yet wonderfully, bitter-sweet. It’s crushing not only because it is not the ending we all crave but also because it is so real. The story taps into our younger selves and has us draw parallels with our very own difficult wishes and conflicting desires in life.

Yes, tales of young romance have been told in literature and film before but Rooney’s is a tender account of how we’re all complex and flawed individuals, as are our relationships with others and the world around us.

The work put into the twelve half-hour episodes of directors Lenny Abrahamson (Room, Frank) and Hettie Macdonald’s sincere adaptation really pay off and make this an instant TV hit. Sally Rooney’s novel has become extremely popular and the stakes were high. It would’ve been far easier to pick a little-known novel for adaptation. But the directing, the acting, the scripting, and the cinematography of this show have certainly not disappointed.

Normal People, as a series, has become a masterpiece in its own right.

Cast & Crew

writers: Sally Rooney, Alice Birch & Mark O’Rowe (based on the novel by Sally Rooney).
directors: Lenny Abrahamson & Hettie Macdonald.
starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Paul Mescal, Sarah Greene, Aislín McGuckin, Fionn O’Shea, Leah McNamara, Eanna Hardwicke, Frank Blake & India Mullen.