Normal People

Normal People might look quiet on the surface, but emotionally, it hits like a truck. Following the tangled relationship of Marianne and Connell from high school into adulthood, it captures the aching miscommunications and deep intimacy of young love with brutal precision. Watching this on a train? Terrible idea. It’s very Irish, very horny, very sad and this shit hurts. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal have unreal chemistry, and the silences between them often say more than any dialogue. At times, I wanted to scream: just talk to each other! But that’s the point, their inability to communicate feels painfully real. “Ouch” barely covers it. This show called me out in more ways than I was prepared for. Quiet, slow, tender, but emotionally relentless. I finished it and just stared at the wall.