Reply to One Day on Netflix… bingeworthy

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[quote=Anonymous]Hillarious! The FT agreed with me that this match would NEVER happen (I’m the upstream jock).

The Financial Times, everybody:

I hate to be the one to disappoint, especially in Valentine’s week and in the fugue of romance that tends to befall us at the time of year. But we must disabuse ourselves of the cultural preoccupation that hot, dumb posh boys with crowds of buddies fall for smart, caustic, socially awkward girls.

The latest manifestation of this pervasive brain/brawn romantic fiction, One Day, started streaming on Netflix last weekend. A 14-part adaptation of David Nicholls’ rabid bestseller, first published in 2009, it follows a will-they-won’t-they-ever-get-their-rocks-off friendship over decades via an annual check-in — the perfect episodic structure for a TV adaptation in this binge-drama age.

Most critics have adored the show’s slow-burning romantic arc: boy with zero plans or ambitions has one-night encounter with star academic on their last day at Edinburgh university; boy stumbles through life buffered by his good looks and private wealth, while girl stumbles through bad relationships and career disappointment buffered by the idealistic notion that she will one day do the world some good. Boy hits rock bottom. Girl starts to achieve goals. Boy is saved by girl who has forever cherished a largely unrequited, almost creepy, crush.

One Day is all part of the much fancied cultural weakness for the notion that true love must follow a painful path. Lysander first spat out the argument in A Midsummer Night’s Dream — largely to justify his decision to ditch his current girlfriend and go chase someone else instead. It’s become a collective passion that true love can cut through class, attitude and looks. Everyone, from Jane Austen to Sally Rooney, has made a fortune on the premise that, if you are pure and patient, you will transcend socio-economic barriers (and physical disadvantage) and your prince will come to you.

Spoiler alert. Even when these people find love, fate tends to dash it on the head. As Love Story taught us, the outcome of these mawkish romantic dramas tends to be a denouement in which one of the couple must be martyred so that the other can appreciate the ecstasy of how it was to feel the “perfect love”. Invariably this must be the woman, because she is, after all, the more fragile sex. The hot boy is left to struggle forward, lonely, sad and irresistible with his still floppy hair and sparkly eyes.

And people love a posh boy, especially this year. It’s an odd kink that in this moment of social awareness, the super-wealthy are being so deified on screen. One Day’s Dexter hails from the bucolia of a handsome manor in the shires, but he’s not as wealthy as his first wife, who seems to live on an estate inhabited by the extras of Saltburn.
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