Television Review | There was a perfectly lovely hit novel back in the day, and now it's finally getting the interpretation it deserves

“What want to do when you're 40?” let's ask That day with the first meters of the series. After that, we follow how the characters move towards the answer.

The question is asked by Emma (Ambika Mod), a sarcastic world healer who just graduated from the University of Edinburgh. He presents it to Dexter (Leo Woodall), to his upperclassman, who answers first “rich” and then “famous”.

The two have just met each other at a party and are pondering their future drunk and in their underwear in Emma's bed, as the sun soon rises. The date is July 15, 1988.

In the next episode, we jump to the same date a year later. Emma tours the country with a theater troupe in a van, and Dexter seduces his way through Rome. They have kept in touch with postcards.

Every That day of the 14 episodes of the series presents a glimpse of one year. In the later episodes, however, we jump to several years so that the journey of the characters is followed all the way up to 2007.

At the bottom of the British series is by David Nicholls beloved novel One Day or That daywhich appeared in 2009. Already two years later it was seen on the big screen, written by Nicholls himself.

That day -film offered a star-powered but loose romantic comedy in which Anne Hathaway's and by Jim Sturgess the main characters played took turns chasing after each other. The film got bad reviews for a reason.

The series format adapts better to the structure of the book and makes the narrative more organized. Days and years just don't dissolve into each other. Every moment is full of potential, both for romance and breakup.

The longer length also gives the opportunity to build more accumulated history between the two and feelings other than romantic: frustration, melancholy and mistrust. That is also good for the whole.

That day series is just as much about friendship as it is about romantic love, and it doesn't make a massive difference between them: in both, you have to overcome the frames created by social classes, backgrounds and worldviews, tolerate the other's condition and situation.

And that's not enough either. You also need the right timing.

The series follows the steps of Dexter and Emma every year until August 15th. Picture: Netflix

Nicholls has also been writing the Netflix interpretation of his novel. However, the series has been created Nicole Taylor. His previous works include an excellent film Wild Rose (2018) as well as a qualifying miniseries The Nest (2020).

With his series, Taylor gets closer to the spirit of the book than the movie. The main actors are a big help in that.

Ambika Mod is remembered This is Going to Hurt -series as the unsmiling trainee doctor and Leo Woodall The White Lotus as a hedonistic anklet.

Casting them opposite each other seems as unlikely an idea as Emma and Dexter's friendship. However, both work perfectly – or, well, the friendship of the characters in the series, with occasional coughs.

On that day, Netflix. (K13)