Netflix’s new romantic drama series One Day, based on David Nicholls’ award-winning book of the same name, was greeted with some skepticism after it was announced. After all, it hadn’t even been 15 years since another well-known adaptation of the novel, a 2011 movie starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, came out. Not only that, but the film was poorly received among both critics and audience members (though, like all polarizing movies, it has its own base of defenders). But the show has, in the week since its release, become an unexpected hit, as evidenced by the scores of posts on social media from viewers who have been left bawling their eyes out after watching the entirety of the series.
If the 2011 film was hard to watch, then Netflix’s new rendition is absolutely excruciating—but this time, it’s a compliment. One Day charts the will-they-won’t-they relationship between two friends, Dexter (Leo Woodall) and Emma (Ambika Mod) by checking in on the protagonists on one day—July 15, aka St. Swithin’s Day in the United Kingdom—every year over the course of 20 years, starting in 1988. Dex and Emma’s relationship starts with a failed one-night stand on the night of their university graduation; after an uncomfortable start, the two end up making a meaningful connection through a conversation about their futures, rather than sex. Over the decades, the power dynamics and romantic interest between the pair seesaw: At the start, Emma, whose career and sense of self-worth is nonexistent, pines after Dex, who is blossoming in the public eye as a television host. The tables eventually turn when Emma makes the jump from aspiring writer to published writer, while Dex, whose personal tragedies and subsequent self-destructive habits cause him to backslide, finds himself left behind and filled with longing.
What makes One Day so captivating is this back-and-forth between Dex and Emma, fueled by a frustrating lifetime of communication errors. The show oscillates between two tones: horrendously awkward, which is poison for watchers vulnerable to secondhand embarrassment, and tragically sad, which is agonizing for hopeless romantics. If you, like me, are both, it’s a rough 14-episode ride that will have you covering your eyes.
Most of the unfortunate timing between the two is due to their tendency to rarely ever be honest with each other about their feelings until it’s too late—which, after watching the two best friends dance around each other for years, will have you screaming “Just tell the TRUTH!” at your TV. (Sorry to my neighbors.) The effects of this are exacerbated by the fact that if the 2011 movie feels rushed and poorly acted, this version is anything but. We not only have to sit through many episodes detailing inelegance or humiliation between them—like Emma admitting she had a crush on Dex as if it’s in the past tense (and the jokes he makes about it, brushing off her very obviously current crush on him), or Dex ambushing Emma with a kiss before she sheepishly reveals she’s seeing someone—but we also have to sit with the characters when they are caught with egg on their faces.
It stings in a good way that Woodall and Mod are great actors who turn their characters’ hurt feelings into a full-tilt emotional experience. It is legitimately difficult to watch Mod, as Emma, try to work her way through Dex’s response about her so-called former crush. But it’s even harder to watch the more heartbreaking moments, like Woodall’s portrayal of Dex as he succumbs to substance abuse and makes the wrong small choices, all of which will eventually lead to him embarrassing himself on live television and showing up less than sober to his parents’ home. It feels like a punishment to watch Emma get involved in relationships with two-bit guys because she can’t be honest with herself about her feelings for Dex, and even worse to witness her confidence crack while she works a mortifying job at a hokey British Tex-Mex restaurant. However, nothing is more depressing than seeing these two continuously lie to each other about their long-harbored love as they take up other partners, all because they’ve finally worked up the courage to be honest, at the most inopportune moment.
It’s not all pain and mortification, though. The show smartly keeps glimmers of hope alive with sweet, fleeting interactions between the pair—just enough to keep the viewer going. When Emma surprises Dex with a kiss on the cheek in a sentimental moment, when Dex drops his jokey manner to remind a struggling Emma that she is deserving of the world, the pair’s seeming lack of boundaries or personal space, always in a platonic cuddle—all of these moments are designed to make you melt, though none compare to the milliseconds of screen time in a later episode that show Dex’s face when Emma merely walks into the cafe he works in. Such moments, laden with tenderness and chemistry, make the heartache that much worse. Here is where the series’ real strength lies: With more time dedicated to the story, we can feel its loss that much more keenly. Whether out of self-preservation, a lack of confidence, faulty assumptions, or even the basic cruelties of life, at the end of the day, Dex and Emma lose a significant amount of time with each other. The pain of that loss, and the cringeworthy ways in which they make the ill-advised choices that lead to this outcome, makes the sucker punch of an ending a much-needed knockout. By this time, you’ll have been covering your eyes for so long that, when you can finally look again, it’ll feel like an incredibly satisfying emotional release. The gravity of that emotional release makes all the twists and turns of the story, and the long, crushing pain felt by the viewer, worth it.
