As you might remember, the 12-part series “Normal People”, adapted from the novel of same name, had followed a wild success. And now, our eyes are on a new adaptation of Sally Rooney novel.
During the first times of the pandemic, in the first months of the 2020, Normal People was one of the TV shows followed the wild success. Firstly up, let us speak about a little bit Normal People in which we were walking through the pastel grasses of Irish lands thanks to wonderful scenes of the series and remember our first loves. On the one hand, the show was drawing attention to dynamics of society and class. Adapted Sally Rooney’s Normal People, the show was highly appreciated and became one of the most talked about series 2020. While the poetic landscape views of Normal People are still fresh in our memory, the first frames from Conversation with Friends, adapted from Sally Rooney novel, evoked a similar excitement our inside. Like Normal People, the story of Conversation with Friends begins with a sincere beginning: “Bobbi and I,”.
Bobbi and Frances, who are best friends and former lovers, are 21-year-old college students living in Dublin. These two Dublin university students participated an invitation attended by Melissa, who perform poetry in this invitation, and they meet Melissa and her husband, Nick, who is a handsome actor. The rest of the story will deal with the complicated and romantic relationship between this couple, who are in their 30s, and Bobbi and Frances.
Rooney describes her first novel as a coming-age-story, in which characters are completely trying to find their way and identities through the narrative. Just like Normal People, the story is built around the emergences of class differences between the characters and the atmosphere after the 2008 economic crash in Dublin. “Though all the characters are completely fictional and their exploits are very much figments of my imagination, the world that they live in was and is very similar to the world that I was living in as I wrote the book,” Rooney told PBS NewsHour.
Even though Claire Kilroy says that Rooney is a novelist who does not use arresting images and poetic flights in an article published in The Guardian, we think that even successful shots of Normal People are exciting enough to keep our attention for Conversation with Friends.
The 12-part drama will be starred by Jemima Kirke, Joe Alwyn, Alison Oliver and Sasha Lane. The same production company will produce the new drama: this time, Lenny Abrahamson will direct the show with Leanne Welham. Screenwriter Alice Birch, who also wrote almost all the episodes of Normal People, is also writing there, along with Mark O’Halloran, Meadhbh McHugh, and Susan Soon She Stanton. The show will premiere on Hulu (USA) and BBC Three and BBC One the upcoming spring.
The producer of the drama, Ed Guiney, stated that they expect to receive different feedbacks from the previous drama, since this time they prepared a project in a different style. However, we are just wondering whether we will see poetic flights on the screen again, which might maintain the deep feelings that Marianne and Connell shared in their silent dialogues.
