Normal People review: A sensual, intimate and complex love story

So often sex scenes in TV shows and in movies are exploitative affairs designed to titillate. In this new show, it’s not.

The anticipated TV adaptation of Sally Rooney’s hugely popular book Normal People is going to draw a lot of attention for its many sex scenes, but for the right reasons.

Here is a TV show or movie that doesn’t use sex scenes as something titillating or “racy” and serves no story or character purpose. Instead Normal People uses them as a means to represent the intimacy and complex relationship between its lead characters.

The 12-episode TV series is centred on two young Irish people, Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal), and follows their on-again-off-again romance from high school through their years at university.

Marianne is highly intelligent, a trait she uses as a shield and a weapon against her classmates and teachers, striking out with acridity whether they deserved it or not (spoiler: they often do). This earns her a reputation for being “a psycho”.

Connell is a popular and beloved athlete at school but he’s also really smart and, in many ways, more insightful and aware than most high school boys.

Romantic but not cheesy

Despite their social differences and their economic disparity, Marianne and Connell are like magnets to each other, an attraction that is so keenly felt, portrayed through looks of longing across the school hallway and then physical passion.

Their secret trysts in his bedroom after school and away from the judgments of their peers, which Connell fears, allows the romance to bloom.

This is where those sex scenes start. They’re tender and sensual, emphasising above all else the emotionality of the moment, and their connection.

The scene in which they consummate for the first time – Marianne’s first of any time – is treated with care by Oscar-nominated director Lenny Abrahamson (Room, Frank) who hovers his camera on Marianne and Connell’s faces.

The camera rarely wanders below the shoulders and even when it does, the nudity is natural and justified, not exploitative.

It’s not just a fleeting, disposable moment either. Out of the 28 minutes of the second episodes, six minutes is devoted to this scene, scoring how significant such an encounter can be.

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Daisy Edgar-Jones has a doe-eyed, expressive face

They can be vulnerable with each other in a way they can’t be with anyone else, and certainly not within the performative roles thrust upon them by the social strictures of a high school.

But they’re also not immune to those pressures either.

The first three of Normal People’s 12 episodes were made available for review, where it progresses only to the end of high school, but those early chapters establish the story of Marianne and Connell so strongly, you’ll be invested in their romance, champing at the bit for more.

While it seems like not much happened plot-wise, the pacing still works. The series luxuriates in moments between Marianne and Connell in the same way the experience of time distorts when you’re caught up in the throes of a love affair, especially a secret one.

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Get lost in the romance

Edgar-Jones and Mescal have a visceral on-screen chemistry, creating an intimacy through what’s not said, in the pauses between words. That’s what Normal People does best, conveying an interiority in its characters through visuals and not dialogue.

Doe-eyed Edgar-Jones, with her striking resemblance to Anne Hathaway and Emmy Rossum, will evoke in the audience a gamut of emotions with the flicker of a look, captured by Abrahamson and cinematographers Suzie Lavelle and Kate McCullough in copious close-ups, extending that intimacy to the audience.

The world of Normal People is also bathed in this beautiful diffused light, which makes it very easy to be drawn into it.

And if you’re worried this is going to be some cheesy, Nicholas Sparks, Hallmark affair, it’s not.

Normal People is a really appealing TV series and you may find yourself lost in Marianne and Connell’s romance as much as they are.

All episodes of Normal People drop on Stan on Monday, April 27

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