I was surprised to hear that One Day was now Netflix series, but then again they do seem to be throwing cash at so many things these days from comedy specials from comics you've never heard of to films you wish you had not.
The question of course is whether this series was warranted in the first place, as the movie was generally well received and did an effective job of conveying the story and emotional punch of the book. Of course some people said it wasn't as good as the book, as bookey people always do. So a series seems to be at attempt at a more faithful stab at the story due to the extended run time.
I initially dismissed the series as pointless, then remembered that the first episode is in Edinburgh which is on my doorstep so I thought I'd give it a go. Because we Scots don't need an excuse to watch Scotland on film.
First off I think the casting is terrible. Its obviously been done as diversity box ticking exercise and that is simply annoying. The other aspect to the casting is the disparity in the two leads, he looks like a male model and she is average looking at best. So its hard to believe he would have given her the time of day. I also found the chubby sassy sidekick female friend pointless and annoying but hey its another diversity box ticked!
A big part of the show appears to be music, which is used as a shortcut to emotion instead of narrative. Its the same thing they do on Derry Girls. Play some nostalgic pop music people like and remember to shortcut the emotions to get the audience in their feels. Although one track I heard seemed to be an updated remix of an 80s dance classic so it felt out of place. Didn't help it was the first song heard either. And the frequency of them dropping retro tracks basically eats up so much time of the episode it makes me question the need for 14 episodes if the narrative is constantly interrupted this way. So far it doesn't seem like much is added the movie didn't cover because of the music scenes.
Its questionable if I will watch any of the other episodes due to these issues, maybe if you have endless time to binge on things fine but it seems your time would be better spent simply watching the movie if you haven't.
You will get to the destination much quicker and its probably closer to the book than the new shiny Netflix version.
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