Everything I Know About Love
This BBC Three series has been adapted from journalist Dolly Alderton’s 2018 memoir of the same name, written in her late 20s about her early 20s. It has been wholeheartedly embraced by the Fleabag generation. The book charts Alderton’s dalliances with some terrible men and flips the idea of the “love of your life” from romance to friends. It’s a sweet feminist idea and it clearly struck a chord. Alderton, who has also written the TV series, is a warm-hearted soul as her agony aunt column in the Sunday Times Style magazine attests.
Maggie is the fictionalised version of Alderton, played with charisma by Emma Appleton. Her best friend since school, Birdy, is the fussy yin to Maggie’s uninhibited yang. Bel Powley (who is excellent in most things, especially Diary of a Teenage Girl) is given a character who is annoyingly earnest, designed to be adorable but is really just a bit of a whinger. The show follows Maggie, Birdy and their two other flatmates, Nell (MarliSiu) and Amara (Aliyah Odoffin), as they navigate early adulthood. These four share an unfeasibly chic and spacious Camden flat. A montage scene of their first night out ends with dawn over Primrose Hill, with Maggie suggesting they all roll down the hill, which they do with abandon. This scene could be a metaphor for the whole series, as not one of them manages to roll in dog poop. The show is meant to be “messy” but does it in quite a picturesque way – hedonism for upper middle class ladies who have the luxury of deferring adulthood. They are typical millennial characters in that they are utterly obsessed with themselves and lack much self awareness; whether they are deliberately written that way is a matter for debate.
And yet, despite this, they are charming in their way. One of the best scenes in the opening episode is where Maggie gets home and does some insouciant naked dancing. Alderton says this was directly lifted from a habit she likes to indulge in; her friends call it strange and say her dancing is akin to a “drunken jellyfish”, but it was actually very cool and funny.
This show is not groundbreaking but it is charming and watchable.
Jessica Wall
Everything I Know About Love is released on 10th June 2022.
Watch the trailer for Everything I Know About Love here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43J5kyU55QY
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