TV Review: Normal People

Marianne and Connell appear to be opposites in every way: she’s a socially awkward, intellectual wallflower from an affluent family, while he is a popular football star from a single parent family, with an intellectual side he’s not so comfortable expressing. Apart from the fact that they attend the same school, the only thing they have in common is that Connell’s mother works for Marianne’s family as their cleaner. Despite this however, they end up in an intense, and intensely sexual, relationship. Going from their small secondary school in rural Ireland to the heady world of student life in Dublin, they navigate the changing landscape of adulthood as their relationship becomes a tug of war between, class, power, sexual politics, and self-delusion.

So, to begin with, I have a shameful confession to make: I couldn’t get into Conversations With Friends, Irish author Sally Rooney’s equally talked about debut, and so I was worried it would be the case with her second novel. However, I ended up loving Normal People (and, judging by the number of awards it won and was nominated for, including the 2018 Costa Novel Award, the 2018 Man Booker Prize, the Waterstones Fiction Book of the Month for May 2019 the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Dylan Thomas Prize, so did many others) and was excited to find out that a television adaptation was planned.

Commissioned by BBC Three and streaming service Hulu, the series is divided into 12 hour-hour long episodes (a good call, as the story is not long enough to sustain multiple hour long episodes). It is directed by Lenny Abrahamson (whose most recent project prior to this was his excellent – and, in my opinion, criminally underrated – 2018 adaptation of Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger) and Hettie Macdonald (whose diverse credits include popular hits such as Casualty, Doctor Who, and Poirot), starring Daisy Edgar Jones and Paul Mescal as Connell and Marianne.

So, the most important question is obviously: is Normal People (2020) a good adaptation of its source material? The short answer is yes. To begin with, Rooney herself co-wrote half the episodes (with British playwright and screenwriter Alice Birch and Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe writing the rest) so the spark and wit of the original dialogue remains. Due to the difference in mediums, it does inevitably lose the book’s immediacy of narration, knowing what’s going on in the characters’ heads (something some might be tempted to compensate for with the overuse of voiceover narration but that Normal People, thankfully, does not) but this is made up for by the dialogue and by the calibre of the cast, which in this case is high. The trade-off is that elements and characters that didn’t get much focus in the book – due to the viewpoint being solely that of either Connell or Marianne – get a bit more detail.

Structurally, Normal People is pretty simple: an hourglass-shaped narrative where the social positions of the two leads – and therefore the balance of power between them – end up reversed. In school, Marianne’s intelligence is not valued by her peers but gains her popularity at university, whereas Connell goes from being popular to being the fish out of water whose shyness hampers him socially. Thematically, it’s even simpler: a love story, something anyone can relate to. Not much may “happen” in terms of events or plot twists but the emotional stakes are akin to a bomb threatening to go off. Another important part of the book, and therefore the television adaptation, is the sexual element of Connell and Marianne’s relationship. Now it is certainly easier to portray sex scenes visually than it is to write them, but it’s still possible to do it badly. Thankfully, this isn’t the case as the production team hired an intimacy consultant to make sure the sex scenes were as natural as possible; effectively serving the story rather than just titillating.

The cast, as I mentioned previously, is excellent, particularly newcomers Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal who play Marianne and Connell. You’re never given very detailed physical descriptions of either of them in the book, but Mescal and Edgar-Jones have good chemistry together and are particularly good at conveying their characters’ emotions non- verbally as well as through the dialogue.

The show looks great, and Stephen Rennicks’ equally great score ties the whole package in a nice neat bow. If you’ve read and enjoyed the book, this adaptation is a treat. If not, then this is the perfect opportunity to not only lose yourself in a good story but to find out what the hype is all about, and why Sally Rooney is one of the most talked-about current authors.

At the time of writing, Normal People is available to watch on BBC iPlayer & Hulu, and available to download from Amazon Prime and iTunes.

Have you watched Normal People? Tell us in the comments below!