How the BBC Three adaption of Normal People captured my soul
The subject of this article makes it seem as though I didn’t already know about Normal People. I’ll have you know that I know a lot about Normal People, which is ironic being less than normal myself.
I actually read Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’ about a year ago, closely followed by her second novel ‘Conversations with Friends’. I think what made me blitz through both books so quickly is Rooney’s easy, readable prose, paired with her ability to capture some of the darker sides of adolescent thinking in a way that seems poignant and touching, rather than depressing and unsettling.
As a lover of the book, I understandably had mixed feelings about how the story of Connell and Marianne’s on-again, off-again relationship would translate on screen. My experience with these sort of adaptions is that some of the magic of literature is often lost in film. Whether it’s because an actor doesn’t look quite how you imagined the character to look, or something about the setting seems off, there is rarely a perfect adaption. This comes extremely close though.
The team over at BBC Three will definitely be giving themselves a pat on the back with this one. Not only is the transition from fictional novel to believable youth drama seamless, but the acting from Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones as relative newcomers is fantastic. Perhaps in part this is helped by Sally Rooney herself having a lot to do with the show and screenplay, or because of its general sense of rawness. Either way, watching it back to back was a true lockdown pleasure; for the numerous topless scenes of Paul Mescal, for the long drawn out twelve episodes, for the heartbreakingly relatable story, and of course, for Connell’s necklace.
