Rose Matafeo is falling in love, maybe, in her new romcom series Starstruck, streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.
Rose Matafeo is falling in love, maybe, in her new romcom series Starstruck, streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.
OPINION:
Romcoms don't get a lot of love. A few have captured our collective heart, sure, but more often than not they're cloy, cheesy and mind-numbingly predictable.
Two attractive people meet and don't get on. A short time later they get it on. An avoidable misunderstanding usually leads to afalling out before someone inevitably ends up running teary-eyed through the rain to a train station or an airport to profess their love thereby enabling our made-for-each-other soul mates to live happily every after.
Okay, that's not entirely fair. Any genre can be broken down to its skeletal bones like the maggot-ridden flesh of a decomposing corpse, but romcoms seem to suffer the most backlash because of it and do appear more wedded to genre tropes.
For such a universal concept love, actually, is incredibly difficult to pull off in a convincing, entertaining and funny way.
So although I don't yet know if the final episode of Rose Matafeo's new romcom Starstuck will see her making a mad dash in bad weather to a transport hub the chances feel high.
Partly because Starstruck is a celebration of the much maligned genre and partly because Matafeo's comedic brand is heavy on pop culture references and throwbacks. For example, the second episode kicks off with her dancing rapturously down the street to Mark Morrison's mid-90s banger Return of the Mack.
Rose Matafeo and Nikesh Patel in the romcom series Starstruck. Streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.
Another example is, er, the whole show. Starstuck basically borrows and updates the premise - but not the story - of the beloved late-90s romcom hit Notting Hill in which Hugh Grant's charmingly befuddled bookseller unknowingly bumbles his way into a relationship with Julia Roberts' world famous movie star.
The big difference here being that Starstruck gender-flips the script. As Matafeo's onscreen flatmate Kate harshly and hilariously says to her early on, "He's a famous actor and you're a little rat nobody".
Although it's hugely improbable that someone who works at a movie theatre wouldn't quickly recognise the A-List blockbuster movie star Tom Kapoor, the opening scenes fudges this point by showing Matafeo's character Jessie as being very merry indeed partying at a New Year's Eve bash in a London club.
After nipping into the seemingly empty men's loos she bumps into Tom while washing her hands. He flirtatiously chastises her quite terrible James Bond impression - "that was actually a private conversation", she shoots back - while she flirtatiously chastises him for opting to pee in a cubicle rather than the urinal - "I treated myself to a sit down one", he says, returning fire.
Rose Matafeo in hew new rom-com series Starstruck. Streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.
A few seductive glances across the room later and they're back at his place ringing in the new year with a bang.
It's only the next morning when she notices a framed movie poster with Tom's face front and centre that she realises who she's with.
"What's done is done, like, he can't take it back," she boasts to her flatmate, after relating the night's bawdy events, before proudly proclaiming. "I am forever a stain on his sexual history."
She's keen, he's keen but before they can make it Facebook official their status becomes complicated after she discovers that he has a girlfriend - or does he? - and ghosts him.
And thus begins the crucial will they/won't they? dynamic of all the great romcoms.
Any show about two people maybe falling in love needs to feel relatable and Matafeo's slightly cringey, slightly babbly, slightly flustered persona will ring true to anyone who's ever failed at playing it cool when trying to impress. Likewise, Nikesh Patel brings an almost ordinary, everyman, quality, to the heart-throb movie star Tom.
Rose Matafeo in hew new rom-com series Starstruck. Streaming on TVNZ OnDemand.
Most importantly the pair have a believable chemistry together that feels real as they awkwardly romance each other.
"You actually made me laugh," Jessie says early on, before delivering the best line of the first episode. "I don't usually find men funny."
That line is about as subversive as Starstruck gets. Instead Matafeo and her co-writer and long-term comedy collaborator Alice Snedden, have dumped the trends of tired cynicism or detached irony to have the series wear its heart on its sleeve.
Anchored by Matafeo's star presence, its whip-smart script and the cosy familiarity of the genre, you'll need a very black heart indeed to not be won over by its charms.
