Conversations with Friends review: Hulu’s TV show is just like Normal People

The last episode Succession’s second season, Shiv Roy — in the midst of an argument with her husband Tom — is clutching a copy of Sally Rooney’s Friendship conversationsShe also brought along a book, which she used to read on the Adriatic Sea coast. This would have been a great show for 2018, or 2019. TheA book is a must-have for a beach trip. Rooney’s first novel, which was released in the spring of 2017, was a sensation. It was a gift that I saw once in a club.

It has been said that a beach book should not be read, but this is often interpreted as code for ridicule. The novel is too informal, too feminine and too chatty. Upon rereading Rooney’s debut, I found Friendship conversationsTo be nothing but. The dialogue is engaging and smart, the characters talking of Slavoj Žižek and Patricia Lockwood, their words often hiding underlying power struggles and emotional tensions between them.

It’s a shame, then, that the BBC and Hulu adaptation of Friendship conversationsThe story has been incredibly filtered and refined, with many awkward silences and longings. It is the story of Frances and Bobbi who were college ex-girlfriends. They perform spoken word poetry together. Nick and Melissa, an actor and writer on C-list, are both in their 30s. Frances, Nick and their affair continue throughout the episode. In the novel, the reason for the affair is multifold: It’s an examination of perceived power and sexual curiosity (on the part of Frances, who has only previously been with women) as well as biting portrayal of the selfishness of young people.

It was two selfish, passive characters who acted against their more active and unpredictable selves that created the excitement in the novel. But Hulu’s version, sadly, has been stripped of dialogue and reasoning, of conversation and intellect, reduced to a blurry fog of moody and graphic sex scenes and passive-aggressive texting.

Photo: Enda Bowe/Hulu

Frances stars Alison Oliver (a brand newcomer). Friendship conversationsFollow her as she shatters a long-term marriage. Oliver is generally unassuming and humorous, but she’s a passive performer that reacts only to what happens around her. Joe Alwyn follows Nick around, looking gloomy as he trots about. What is it about these two that makes them so attractive to one another? In the book, it’s a series of flirtations, quick and direct, a sense of danger and escape from both of their all-too-normal lives. Here? Boredom and television appeal might be the two most common reasons. There’s not even enough chemistry to sustain them through the affair’s first go-round.

Sasha Lane and Jemima Kirke, two of the last decade’s most unexpected and magnetic talents, play Bobbi and Melissa, the two significantly more dynamic characters. Lane — so surprising in American Honey — plays Bobbi bitter and biting, with none of the unpredictable spark she carries in the novel. And Kirke for the most part is altogether brushed aside as “the wife.” You don’t bring Jemima Kirke in to be the wife!

We know that adaptation doesn’t involve transposition. There’s no fun in that. Anyone who tries to read the story and then translates it onto screen will be disappointed. One of the purposes of adaptation, however, is to modify or transform the structure or to realign characters. It’s a way to make something that was once two-dimensional three-dimensional. A good example of this, perhaps, would be Lenny Abramson’s adaptation of Rooney’s novel Normal People. Hulu and Abramson’s version was much more empathetic and funny, removing some of the soap opera dramatics and injecting both a sense of irony and pathos throughout. Dublin was also a lovely, intimate setting that felt just like the characters. Lived. That this team has again adapted Rooney’s work feels like an initially good decision, but unfortunately, it falls flat. Perhaps because of COVID-19 shooting protocols, whatever they were, we don’t see much of these characters interacting together or really living in their world. The show is isolated, lonely, its Dublin sparse with Frances’ apartment, a bookstore, and the stage where occasionally the two girls perform.

Photo: Enda Bowe/Hulu

Photo: Enda Bowe/Hulu

These characters are Friendship conversationsAs originally written, these are tropes but they work well together: Frances the shrewd college student, Bobbi, the talented writer and Melissa, the messy lesbian. Nick, the handsome, wimpy Ken doll. The characters discussed politics, capitalism and literature in dozens of scenes. However, the show stops short of these discussions going anywhere, or even saying anything. They sit at tables, their dialogue is stilted and awkward, trying to find a conclusion before being released into the wilderness to mope. Frances and Bobbi are both self-centered young men who love bold statements, no matter how silly they may seem. But no one questions them — they don’t even question each other, and moments of tension are often diffused by moving on to a new scene entirely. It’s as if the whole adaptation is operating in a passive-aggressive way toward them, as if none of these characters are worth seeing through.

At one point in the text conversation between Frances and Bobbi, Frances highlights the word “feelings.” She doesn’t tap through; rather she simply analyzes it, as if selecting it will provide some insight. In the book, however, she searches through their years of text conversations to dig up a back and forth in which they discuss Frances’ lack of emotionality, that Bobbi believes a person can’t just be “unemotional” as Frances claims, that that’s like being “without thought.” There’s also the question of money and status: Nick and Melissa are far more well off than Frances (though Bobbi comes from a moneyed family, she feigns a poor-student existence perhaps to better blend in socially). A conversation in the book between Frances and Nick about his clothing — worth more than she feels comfortable spending — is streamlined here to Nick’s handsomeness privilege, that he must not feel vulnerability because of how handsome he is. That’s probably true — literally look at Joe Alwyn — but the power imbalance between that of a 20-year-old woman and a 30-something man gets reduced to “He’s hotter.” There ought to be much more danger and complexity here, rather than noticing it and moving on.

Photo: Enda Bowe/Hulu

What’s perhaps so frustrating about the show is that no one is really talking about anything at all. This adaptation mostly mirrors the tone and style of Normal PeopleIt is a bitter and frustrating relationship between two long-lasting friends. Normal PeopleAnd Friends may have conversations are different novels, and it does Rooney’s writing and storytelling a disservice to treat them so similarly. Much of her work is often dismissed for being casual. However, it’s much closer to Jane Austen and E.M. Forster who both wrote genuinely humorous and class conscious books. These novels were more than just marriage plots. They also had philosophically difficult themes, asking why people love whom they love. Rooney’s work, too, should be considered in that vein, the ironic hypocrisies we come up against in our pursuit to love and be loved.

Although it can be difficult to compare what something is with what it could be, Friends to have conversationsIt was stripped of everything that could have made the relationship challenging, smart, frustrating, and most importantly, fun. What’s left is a story of a relationship with nothing at stake. Nick and Melissa have no chemistry, and there are literal scenes between them; Frances is not comfortable with Bobbi and they don’t feel at ease. Through its gritty cinematography and glum music, the show wants you believe that it has a meaning. Nothing can save the show from its own emptyness. At 12 episodes, the limited series feels stretched thin as an unrepentant slog with little to say and less to show, like opening up a too-long text from someone you don’t know very well — worth a skim, maybe, but then back to your afternoon at the beach.

The 12 Episodes of Friends talking to each otherHulu now streams these videos.