One Day review: A bingeable, sentimental romance with all the depth of a puddle

It must be love: Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall as Emma and Dexter in Netflix's One Day.

REVIEW

One Day is a novel by David Nicholls that everyone seemed to own in the 2000s, sitting on the shelf between High Fidelity and Bridget Jones’ Diary. It was a romance with a neat concept: revisiting two people, Emma and Dexter, on the same date each year – St Swithin’s Day – from university through their 20s and 30s.

Whether you found the characters adorable or slappable depended on your psychological make-up and tolerance for them calling each other “Dex” and “Em” in every sentence while being self-consciously cool (him) and overly earnest (her). But the people who loved it really loved it, which means Netflix’s new adaptation has a high bar to clear. It is best for all concerned if we do not speak of the 2011 film in which Anne Hathaway attempted to play someone from Leeds.

Well, fans of the novel should be delighted with this series, which has been adapted by Three Girls writer Nicole Taylor. It’s the most bingeable Netflix offering since Emily in Paris – deep as a puddle in a drought, but sometimes isn’t that exactly what you want? It’s so easily digestible that some of the 14 episodes are barely 20 minutes long.

Dex and Em have their first encounter on graduation day at Edinburgh University in 1988. Over the years that followthey are mostly friends, occasionally estranged, sometimes in relationships with other people (Jonny Weldon is perfect as Emma’s boyfriend, a tragically unfunny stand-up comedian). You will find yourself yelling at the screen for them to just get it on and stop faffing about, but romcoms must put obstacles in the way of true love.

The series stars Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall, and they get it spot on. As with the book, you have to suspend your disbelief that handsome, charming, public school Dexter falls for awkward, cerebral, ordinary Emma, who is described in the novel as having greasy skin and a fat face. But that is one secret to the novel’s success: it’s a Cinderella story in which she eventually bags her prince – in fact, she rescues him. Fifteen-year-old girls will adore it.

Mod is of Indian heritage, therefore her character is too, but this is only referenced in passing and has no bearing on the story. The actress, so good in This Is Going to Hurt, gets everything right except the generic Northern accent, which she appears to have based on Mrs Hall from All Creatures Great and Small, with a dash of Cold Feet’s Fay Ripley.

Fans of the novel will love this Netflix adaptation.

Woodall, last seen playing a garrulous Essex boy in The White Lotus, makes Dexter vulnerable and likeable, even during the period when he’s presenter of a TV show called Largin’ It (think Johnny Vaughan-meets-Tim Lovejoy). When Dexter and Emma are together, they’re very watchable. Separately, though, there is an imbalance because all of Dexter’s scenes are so much more lively to watch than Emma’s drab existence.

The soundtrack is a nostalgic treat. The time frame covers the 90s and 2000s, and there are nice era-specific touches: men wearing Davidoff Cool Water, ladettes on late-night TV, kettle chips as a new and sophisticated snack. If you’re the sentimental type, you’ll watch One Day and ponder the gap between how you thought your life would turn out when you were young, and how it actually did. The rest of us can just enjoy being taken back to a time when arranging a date involved writing a letter, visiting a public call box or – for the real early adopters – owning a mobile phone with a pull-out antenna.

One Day is available on Netflix from Thursday, February 8.