Normal People — It Is Not the Sex
What it is it about Normal People the Irish drama from the BBC now on Hulu that has made it such a hit? Not surprisingly, the relationship of two young people — Marianne Sheriden (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell Waldron (Paul Mescal) as they go from adolescence to young adulthood is a smash with that cohort. But as a fan of The Sopranos, Mad Men, Fauda, Shtisel, Unorthodox (my Jewish genre), Downton Abbey, Succession, West Wing and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, how did Normal People make into my repository of irresistibles?
After all, I am more than 50 years older than the protagonists and not routinely drawn to soapy portrayals of fraught romance. Oh, it’s the sex, you crabbed old man, and there is a lot of it. No, by the standards of photographed intimacy, this is not lascivious. It is real, fumbling a bit to start with, awkward and, ultimately, erotic in the best sense. This is a couple for whom touching goes well beyond their skin. Watching them is a way to understand why people need to do the stuff we always have.
In 12 half-hour episodes (the right length for chapters in what is an adaptation of Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel), Marianne and Connell struggle with their inner selves and each other to discover how two odd-shaped puzzle pieces can eventually fit together. Marianne and Connell’s dynamic might veer towards cliché. She comes from a wealthy, cold home and is out-of-step with the teenage cool kids in the school. His mother cleans Marianne’s home. He is a star of the rugby team and sought after by pretty girls and rowdy boys. But what draws them to each other is that they are smart, sensitive and confused about what really matters.
I never read Sally Rooney’s novel and probably would not have started the series if I hadn’t read the review by Hank Steuver in the Washington Post which says the series “exemplifies the very idea of escapist, captivating story telling — a love story that gets so close to the real deal that a viewer becomes as besotted as the lovers themselves.” Or James Poniewozik’s review in the New York Times who says Marianne and Connell “have so much chemistry you may need lab goggles.” Two leading television critics; two men; neither, I suspect, all that young.
My wife Susan (we spend a good deal of time choosing what to watch together) lost interest after the first two episodes, fed up with the fact that Connell didn’t have the grit to have a public relationship with a girl who was not in his high school crowd, and described by one of his friends as an “ugly, flat chested bitch.” I urged her to come back to the series. She finished but it never caught on for her as it did for me. On the other hand, I never got into Call the Midwife or Grey’s Anatomy either.
I was perhaps drawn to Connell’s ambition to be a writer and how at Trinity he develops confidence in that goal. Marianne also values ideas and literature. In the swirl of other influences, their common intelligence is one of the private aspects of what brings them together. Other diffuse dimensions of the show proved to be just as appealing for other critics.
Their style of manner and dress turns out to be intriguing enough for the Financial Times to devote a lengthy analytical column asserting that Normal People “became the hit costume drama of lockdown…from Connell’s chain to Marianne’s strappy dresses, their wardrobe speaks louder than words.” A fan account dedicated to the silver chain he wears around his neck has, at last count, 140,000 followers. “Twenty somethings,” the FT’s fashion critic wrote, “are buying up ‘Marianne sweaters’, colorful, chunky crewneck knits.”
Lorna Dugan, the show’s costume designer explains that the actors make whatever they are wearing look good on them. Connell’s worn running shoes and tee shirts, Marianne’s blouses and longish skirts somehow convey messages of status and their rightful place among the students at Trinity College in Dublin, where so much of the story is set. Why is that the case? I can’t answer. But almost everyone these days, wherever you are in age and stage, dresses younger than they used to which means that informal fashion — as artfully conveyed in Normal People — is now fashion.
The other focus among critics and feature writers is Ita O’Brien, the intimacy coordinator who staged and guided the actors through their paces. In interviews, Edgar-Jones and Mescal seem astonishingly comfortable with what they had to do on camera, which may be because it felt natural to them rather than contrived as sex scenes tend to be.
It has to be said, repeatedly, that we are in an extraordinary era of narrative storytelling for the home screen. I am certainly not in the mafia, am not a 1960s advertising man (although I could have been). I am not a Haredi Jew or an early 20th century British aristocrat. What these programs share is enough detailed authenticity, characters worth knowing and filmmaking craft to give viewers a satisfying sense that the programing is for them. That, I assume, is also the case for the big picture franchise movies, like Stars Wars and X-Men, which I would only see if accompanying a teenage grandson.
When I read fiction as part of a reading group, I look for the sociology on display rather than the literary merits. John Updike’s Rabbit series was about somewhat dreary mid-20th century American circumstances. I felt a bit as though I was there. Toni Morrison’s novels are powerful because their mixture of African-American pride and rage are essential to understanding this most profound of our national fault lines.
I doubt that Normal People for all its success as a book is great literature or that its streaming adaptation will be watched a century from now. And no storytelling on any platform is for everyone. I’ll bet that the overlap between ESPN’s Michael Jordan blockbuster and Normal People was very small. That is one of the reasons for the huge appeal of television at home. The choices are vast. The viewer can set their own schedule and doesn’t need to justify leaving before the end. We are in charge of where, when and how we consume today’s entertainment — a privilege not to be underestimated.
I felt like I got to know the Irish millennials on screen, and I’ll be waiting with anticipation for what the actors, the writers, the director, the costume designer and the intimacy coordinator will do next that will be as engaging and, in its way, moving as this series was.
