Charming ‘One Day’ adaptation is ‘Normal People’, but without the sex

The sprawling plot of the novel – which deals with a couple who meet for the first time at university but take yonks to get together – was always much better suited to a series and in this new iteration the episodes feel very like chapters.

It takes a while to get going and starts a bit like Normal People, but without the sex. In 1988 an Asian Yorkshire girl, Emma (a brilliantly cast Ambika Mod) meets floppy-haired toff Dexter (Leo Woodall) at a Gothic and gorgeous university in Edinburgh.

She is socially awkward, literary and blunt; he is cheekily confident, negging her about her thesis while shrugging off his reputation as the college lothario.

He hasn’t a clue where she’s from but guesses northern. They have an almost-one-night-stand – he gets his shirt off and they do end up in bed – but nothing sexual happens (a really annoying conversation can kill any mood) and, over a wholesome day spent walking in the hills, they skirt around the riddle of each other.

We cut forward to the following year. He’s off living it up in a villa in Rome with his old lush of a mother while she’s touring schools as part of a hideously earnest drama troupe. They write to each and wonder where life will take them and their powerfully sublimated feelings for one another.

By 1990 both have moved to London. He’s developed alarming bangs – a kind of choppy bob – and is regularly on TV perkily voicing segments as a VJ. She has yet another debasing gig: this time as a waitress in a Mexican fast food place that makes her do a staff line dance on the restaurant floor four times a day. She chafes at being treated too much like a friend – steady on bringing the new girlfriend to see the line dance – but not enough to bring matters to a head.

The soundtrack through these first few episodes is fabulous and nostalgic with pop of the era, like S’Express, sitting alongside classic indie bands such as Cocteau Twins whose music is blasted over a scene in a park where the sun sets into a purple haze (the whole series is very, very beautiful and more cinematic than the film).

Woodall is just the right pitch of posh: insouciant but never arch or overdone.

The class and culture tensions are wittily played with: she pooh-poohs his arrogance in assuming that she didn’t want to have sex for religious reasons. “God wasn’t involved,” she assures him.​

Through the 1990s they continue this game of thrust and parry, and each has relationships with different people, but I’m sure I won’t be spoiling anything by telling you that they do finally, of course, get together. The series is about the way we move toward the ones we love and then retreat, wary of protecting ourselves, fearful of overwhelming intimacy.

The inspiration for the novel was apparently a line from Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles where the heroine realises that as well as birthdays and anniversaries “there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death... a day which lay sly and unseen and among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound.”

But there are also notes of ABBA’s The Day Before You Came and the quiet significance of the moment just before they meet “when life was well within its usual frame”.

The series is long – 12 episodes – and in no hurry but it is sweet and those who persevere with it will be rewarded with something unexpectedly nourishing.

The odd throuple: Reality, comedy and show tunes

Hot Mess Summer Netflix A group of sun-kissed young hotties think they’re going on a Love Island-style show, but – surprise! – Rylan Clark is actually sending them to work behind the bar which will hopefully build their character more than any amount of posing and preening ever could.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Sky Comedy While other classic sitcoms have outstayed their welcome, Curb Your Enthusiasm has retained its misanthropic magic through the years with increasingly free-form scripts. Here Larry David and the ensemble return for the 12th and final season.

An American in Paris Sky Arts Of course the streaming services will be clogged with new romantic fare this week but there’s no topping this Gershwin-scored 1951 classic – starring Gene Kelly who performed a mesmerising dance sequence – to really get us in the Valentine’s mood.