There was a good amount of buzz around Hulu's Conversations with Friends, which premiered last month after the resounding success of Normal People back in 2020. Both series were adapted from Irish novelist Sally Rooney's successful books by the same names which follow Irish students as they navigate the fraught years of university; both series were co-written by Alice Birch (Rooney only returning to produce Conversations) and directed by Lenny Abrahamson. But while Normal People was praised for showing just that — some normal people (at least of a kind) — Conversations with Friends paints more inaccessible portraits of its characters.
The new series follows Frances (Alison Oliver), a 20-something finishing her last year of school in Dublin, and her former love and now, best friend, Bobbi (Sasha Lane), at a monotonous pace. The two young women are adrift, though not unhappily. They perform spoken-word poetry together, but Frances, ever studious, pens all the material. Their drama is typical friendship stuff, punctuated with artistic growing pains and youthful indiscretions.
Rooney's novel doesn't leave it there. In the book, there are two distinct layers to Frances: the cool, reserved facade she presents to most people, and underneath that, the thought-laden, internet-stalking, hyper-cerebral striver desperation for affection. Critics and readers have praised Rooney for the way she navigates the tension between these two personas and articulates a particularly millennial brand of angst. The book prioritizes interiority over external action, and Rooney dedicates a lot of her word count to private thoughts and secret behaviors. Of course, this kind of story can be difficult to render in film or television — Normal People worked because the production team pried under the characters' skin, past that tricky outer layer. Conversations with Friends, however, remains frustratingly surface-level. Reviewing the series for The Guardian, Lucy Mangan wonders: “Why doesn’t anyone speak? Why can’t anything happen?”
The show doesn't breed much empathy for Frances, but it serves as a different kind of mirror: one that shows us how easy it is to be misunderstood — or worse, not seen at all. Whether it means to or not, Conversations with Friends mimics the gap between young people and the world around them that Rooney has tried to traverse, or at least map, with her writing. Watching the show, we don't get substantial insight into Frances' mental state, so we can’t interpret her motivations — and that’s the show's fault, not ours. But this kind of miscommunication, or loss in translation, is one of the things that Rooney is so fascinated by. What does it mean for us if we can craft a vibrant email, but can’t manage a conversation with the living human being in front of us? With its subdued characters and particular imagery, the series manages to accentuate the divide between interior and exterior; in fact, it widens that gap into an impassible void.
Frances' character is not supposed to be obviously compelling by any means — that's Bobbi's role. The first few scenes of the show make the contrast between Frances and Bobbi abundantly clear: Frances is the writer, and Bobbi is the muse. Awkward Frances pales in comparison to her friend, who speaks frequently and uninhibitedly, hitting things off with the magnetic and established writer Melissa (Jemima Kirke) at a poetry reading. Soon, the three women are taking a dip in the ocean together. Heading back to Melissa’s house afterward, Frances trails behind Melissa and Bobbi, whose chatter fills the silence that envelops Frances.
Nick (Joe Alwyn) is Melissa's husband and Frances' lover. Frances and Nick meet over a stilted dinner conversation at Melissa's after the beach, where we discover he's nearly as awkward as Frances. Not long after their meeting, Nick and Frances kiss — this marks the beginning of an affair and an unraveling for Frances. After she and Nick have sex for the first time, Frances cries, then erupts in giggles — one of her most effusive moments in the series. She tells Nick that Bobbi once told her the inexplicable tears were a sign of her repressed nature. She’s kind of joking, but this is one of the few aha moments in the series. “It’s just a physical thing. I feel great. Thank you.” She laughs.
But the Frances we get in the show — inexplicably cold and randomly rude — is much flatter than the Frances we get on the page. Literary Frances is plagued with existential uncertainty and an uneasy self-awareness; on the silver screen, Frances is completely blinded by her introspection, and even as viewers, it’s hard to see around her myopia. While the book's Frances is constantly grappling with the tension between the person she wants to be and the way she's acting, TV's Frances is unaware until the very end — we have to watch eleven episodes before someone manages to knock Frances out of her self-indulgent stupor and force some perspective. Frances, upset that Bobbi is screening her calls and ignoring her texts, calls Melissa. "Why did you show Bobbi my story?" she demands, referring to the short story she published about her relationship with Bobbi. Melissa unleashes her anger then, and Frances seems impossibly taken aback. "It wasn't about you," she defends. Maternal Melissa slaps her on the metaphorical wrist. "Your actions have impact. Your writing has impact. The way you have behaved has real consequences!" This is the first time Frances is pulled out of her own head and made to look at the repercussions of her actions, and how she is not the only one to feel them.
For most of the show, it’s clear Frances is holding nearly everything back. But whereas Normal People had viewers pleading for lovebirds Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal) to just figure it out, we can't even beg Frances to speak her truth, because there aren't many clues about what she might want to say. In Normal People, the relationship between Marianne and Connell sparks revelations and fosters tenderness, not withdrawal. They both play coy — Marianne sarcastic and Connell self-effacing — but their repartee reveals their self-consciousness, and ultimately softens them to each other. Meanwhile, Conversations with Friends is filled with moments that might've been meaningful if the characters had more texture throughout, but they end up feeling empty. In the final scenes of the series, Frances receives an accidental phone call from Nick. "You're very quiet," he notes (as though she usually isn't). "I'm in a bookshop," she replies (as though that's an explanation for her behavior). It's easy to laugh at this exchange — does Nick even know her? She's always quiet, always reticent. To work the way its source material does, the show needed more heart to pump blood into these otherwise banal interactions.
For her part, Oliver handles Frances’ micro-expressions quite well, imbuing her with palpable anxiety. There are flashes of emotional expression and hints at vulnerability: Frances swallows almost imperceptibly when she has to answer a question, or when she receives a provocative text; her lips part ever so slightly when she relaxes into pleasure or zones out on her phone. Then there are the rejections of feeling, gestures of closure or rejection; for example, Frances crosses her arms while she takes a stroll on a sunny Croatian afternoon. When Bobbi criticizes or Nick makes her uncomfortable, Frances makes concessions and laughs in the same breath, desperately trying to get on the right side of things. She negates herself at every turn.
The show’s cinematography also accentuates Frances’ simultaneous and conflicting immersion and isolation. The camera centers on her as she walks through crowded public spaces (public squares, busy corridors, and parties) or stands alone (waiting for the train or walking out of her apartment). We often see Frances separated from the other characters by doors, windows, or phone screens. The implication is not that though she doesn’t live in isolation by any means, Frances feels quite separate from the rest of the world.
Though the TV adaptation is ultimately more one-dimensional relationship drama than it is the meticulous examination of millennial malaise that Rooney might have intended, its failure to connect is telling in its own way. In effect, the show offers a glimpse of what life looks like when crippling self-consciousness prevents people from authentic expression or connection: the whole world flattens.