In One Day, the year is 1988 and students Emma and Dexter meet in Edinburgh. Emma is from Leeds, Dexter is from London, and after getting into a conversation they spend the night together.
The next day, they hang out before going their separate ways. However, they remain in touch, exchanging letters and postcards as they go about their lives.
As the years pass by, Emma and Dexter maintain their friendship, go on holiday together, have arguments etc, and so on. Over the course of time they forge new relationships, but they remain interested in each other, and a yearning for one another bubbles under the surface.
Told over the course of 14 episodes, One Day is a British limited series created by Nicole Taylor. The series is based on the book of the same name by David Nicholls, stars Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall, and is new to stream on Netflix from today.
Set out as a romantic comedy-drama, revolving around two characters, One Day is designed to be a slow burning tale about simmering love. Emma and Dexter share a connection, this turns into a long-running friendship/relationship, and the series explores their feelings over the course of multiple years.
Each episode represents a different year (1988, 1989, 1990, etc), and essentially offers up a little snapshot into the lives of the two leads. As each year passes by, Emma and Dexter are in different places, physically, spiritually, and emotionally, and the series looks at how they stay connected.
Some episodes have the characters sharing plenty of screen time, others not so much. The aim of the series is to weave through time and showcase the ups and downs along the way.
Does it work? In part, but One Day is a heck of a slog and not worth the runtime.
The series has its moments, and lead stars Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall are fine, but it is too long winded and lacks the right punch to maintain its length. One Day is also nowhere near as interesting as it tries to be, and if you feel a bit bored during episode one, then prepare to be bored through episodes two to thirteen too.
Episode fourteen, the final episode, is decent but no last minute drama can make up for what came before. If a series only becomes good when it is near the end, it’s not a good series.
I stuck with One Day for the purposes of reviewing the show, but had I been watching the series for my own enjoyment, I would have given up quite quickly. There’s simply not enough material in this series to justify staying with it.
Once you get beyond the fun of seeing the characters change their clothes and hair styles to match the passing years, there’s not a great deal more to latch onto. The central premise of the two characters having some kind of non-existent romantic relationship becomes tedious within a handful of episodes, and you can’t help but wonder why they don’t just get together?
Emma and Dexter spend years drifting in and out of each other’s orbits, but they mostly dither around. They have plenty of opportunities for a full-blown romance, but they dance round each other whenever they meet and opt to date other people instead.
Yawn.
In the real world, these two people would shag a few times when they are in their twenties, discover if they are compatible or not, and then… THEY WOULD MOVE ON WITH THEIR LIVES! No sane person drags this sort of thing out for years and years, unless they are characters in a schmaltzy television show.
The premise of One Day works for a movie (it was previously adapted in 2011), where various factors stop Emma and Dexter from getting it on over the course of 100 minutes, but to stretch this across a series is just ludicrous. In total, One Day runs from 1988 to 2007, and that’s far too long.
And this is a twenty-year period in which no one seems to gain weight, experience baldness, or lose any teeth. Seems like a very odd few years to me.
When One Day is at its best, it is when the series is hitting small, intimate moments which have nothing to do with the Emma/Dexter relationship. A scene revolving around the ill-health of Dexter’s mother is quite moving, while Emma talking about an affair she’s having with a work colleague is also interesting stuff.
Beyond this, the soundtrack is fun, boasting tracks from Blur, Corner Shop, The Cranberries, The Verve, Suede, etc, and… erm… yeah, that’s about it. She’s likeable, he’s pretty, but that’s all there is.
One Day is a dull series, drawn out to the Nth degree, which attempts to make audiences care during the 11th hour. The occasional bright spots which permeate the drama (mostly the soundtrack) do little to make up for the slow storytelling and the end result is largely a waste of time and money.
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Thank you for taking the time to read this review on It’s A Stampede!. For more reviews, check out the recommended reads below.
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