I don’t know when television commissioners are going to learn that when a programme manages to bottle lightning, with all the viewing figures, social media buzz and general kudos that comes with that, the very last thing they should do is try to replicate it.
The new Channel 4 series Alice & Jack, billed as “a love story for the ages”, feels like an attempt to “do” Normal People for a slightly older set. Alice (Andrea Riseborough) is a successful financier who I deeply suspect was described as “enigmatic” and “feisty” in the casting callout. She first meets Jack (Domhnall Gleeson), a slightly shambolic but pure-hearted research scientist dedicated to curing diseases, on an app-arranged date. The masochist in him responds well to her blank-faced, brutal banter and they go back to her place and have sex. The next morning, she – typically – turfs him out and tells him never to contact her again.
We are meant to believe this is the start of a grand passion that will shape the rest of their lives. The problem is that it seems more like the very ordinary date of a tiresome woman and what I believe the young people today would call a beta cuck. You can’t fake chemistry between actors and there is none here. “Enigmatic” is also hard to do. Later, flashbacks to her childhood will encourage us to think of her as fascinatingly damaged, but the backstory is so thin and well-worn that it simply enables the viewer to tick off another box on the cliche list.
Other items on that list include “penetrating insights into his psyche by her”, “evocative but essentially meaningless asides from both”, “major personality differences revealed over simple but classic acts like going out for morning-after croissants” and of course “mournful gazing throughout”.
Without a believable or understandable passion between the two, the rest is thistledown – and increasingly pointless. Lines such as: “If I were careful with anything in this world, it would be you,” and: “She blew a hole in my soul,” are tasked with doing heavy lifting they are far too weak to manage. She disappears for months or years on end, he slowly moves on with his life, but can’t ever get this lost love out of his head. They both seem like fools – Alice a manipulative, selfish one; Jack a simple one.
The story is further thrown off balance by the introduction, a few years into the tale, of Aisling Bea as Jack’s wife, Lynn. Compared with Riseborough’s minimalist performance and underwritten role, Bea bursts on to the screen as a mass of colour, warmth and vitality. Lynn, fatally for the “love story for the ages” narrative, is sparky, attractive and funny. She makes Jack seem to be punching so far above his weight that the idea of him pining for the woman he had sex with years before becomes not just incredible, but absurd.
Of course, Alice comes back and wrecks his life. To which the only possible response is: “Yeah, and you earned it, mate.” He lies to Lynn and is further bonded to Alice when her dismal backstory – the single thing designed to explain her entire personality, something nobody has bothered to give her – is revealed at her mother’s funeral. When Lynn finds out that Jack has lied in order to accompany Alice there, they break up.
In the aftermath, Jack and Alice grow closer and she is moved to say things such as: “I love you, but we don’t have a future together,” “If I could be with anyone in the world, it would be with you,” and: “You’re like the incarnation of everything I’ve ever wanted and can’t have.” They are the kind of moments that make you hope the actor got a bonus payment every time they had to say them.
And on and on it goes. Given that they were verging on being too old for this kind of nonsense when the saga begins (no ages are given, but Riseborough and Gleeson are in their 40s and seem to be playing no more than 10 years below that at the outset), the faint risibility of the early episodes only increases. At least the dafties in Normal People had the excuse of being teenagers when they met. We all remember that excitement and hormonal overdrive and we could all feel the chemistry between Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Alice & Jack works harder and harder to convince us of everything, but, despite the talented leads giving it their all, there isn’t enough to convince us of anything.
• Alice & Jack aired on Channel 4 and is available to stream
