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I hate to be the one to disappoint, especially in Valentine’s week and in the fugue of romance that tends to befall us at the time of year. But we must disabuse ourselves of the cultural preoccupation that hot, dumb posh boys with crowds of buddies fall for smart, caustic, socially awkward girls.
The latest manifestation of this pervasive brain/brawn romantic fiction, One Day, started streaming on Netflix last weekend. A 14-part adaptation of David Nicholls’ rabid bestseller, first published in 2009, it follows a will-they-won’t-they-ever-get-their-rocks-off friendship over decades via an annual check-in — the perfect episodic structure for a TV adaptation in this binge-drama age.
Most critics have adored the show’s slow-burning romantic arc: boy with zero plans or ambitions has one-night encounter with star academic on their last day at Edinburgh university; boy stumbles through life buffered by his good looks and private wealth, while girl stumbles through bad relationships and career disappointment buffered by the idealistic notion that she will one day do the world some good. Boy hits rock bottom. Girl starts to achieve goals. Boy is saved by girl who has forever cherished a largely unrequited, almost creepy, crush.
One Day is all part of the much fancied cultural weakness for the notion that true love must follow a painful path. Lysander first spat out the argument in A Midsummer Night’s Dream — largely to justify his decision to ditch his current girlfriend and go chase someone else instead. It’s become a collective passion that true love can cut through class, attitude and looks. Everyone, from Jane Austen to Sally Rooney, has made a fortune on the premise that, if you are pure and patient, you will transcend socio-economic barriers (and physical disadvantage) and your prince will come to you.
Spoiler alert. Even when these people find love, fate tends to dash it on the head. As Love Story taught us, the outcome of these mawkish romantic dramas tends to be a denouement in which one of the couple must be martyred so that the other can appreciate the ecstasy of how it was to feel the “perfect love”. Invariably this must be the woman, because she is, after all, the more fragile sex. The hot boy is left to struggle forward, lonely, sad and irresistible with his still floppy hair and sparkly eyes.
And people love a posh boy, especially this year. It’s an odd kink that in this moment of social awareness, the super-wealthy are being so deified on screen. One Day’s Dexter hails from the bucolia of a handsome manor in the shires, but he’s not as wealthy as his first wife, who seems to live on an estate inhabited by the extras of Saltburn. At a time when wage inequality has become a burning issue and opportunity stagnated, it’s perhaps inevitable that we might press our greasy noses to the window to perve at the super-rich.
We may frown at nepo babies, but we still fawn over Succession offering a small glimpse into that world. One Day echoes the same themes of class, aspiration and opportunity best explored in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. It’s presumably no coincidence that the famous TV adaptation of that 1940s drama first aired at another time of huge inequity, and the rising tide of Thatcherism, in 1981.
Thankfully in the real world, most of us abandon the adolescent raptures of unrequited love. God forbid you are the person who has carried around a One Day flame for 20 years. Being trapped in the friendship zone is an exquisite artistic torture, but it makes for a miserable life.
Nevertheless, I still seek the reassurance that true love might exist, especially in the week when BBC broadcaster Steve Wright has died suddenly, taking with him his long-running smoochy coochie Love Songs radio franchise. My favourite source of unadulterated romance right now is Meet Cutes NYC, the hugely popular social media account co-founded last year by three friends, Aaron Feinberg, Jeremy Bernstein and Victor Lee. The trio have commanded an audience of millions with short videos in which they stop unsuspecting couples going about their business in the city and ask them how they met.
As a glimpse behind the hard metropolitan demeanour of New Yorkers, Meet Cutes NYC unveils the city’s more adorable side. The couples, invariably harassed and grumpy-looking when approached on camera, seem to soften immediately on being asked to talk about their other halves.
More compellingly, the most enduring couples never dawdled in the friendship zone. They had a fairly straightforward courtship where they revealed their feelings quickly, they respect each other, are honest and, most crucially, laugh at each other’s jokes.
The interviews reveal great life partners as equals, rather than as props for each other’s changing moods. They listen to each other, and champion their qualities. They very rarely talk of social status and, while they may have gone through big emotional evolutions, they tend to work as a team. As relationship guidance, their counsel is often invaluable: they cut straight through the bullshit and a great many have been together for more than 40 years.
A repository of hope within a medium that tends to nurture darker, more malign themes, Meet Cutes NYC is the best reminder that true love does exist. Even better, it thrives well past that moment when that floppy hair starts to expire.
Email Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com
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