Mayflies

As teenagers, James and Tully bonded over a shared desire to make it out of the small Scottish village they grew up in, James via writing, Tully through his music. Some thirty years later, James is called back to their home town for a meeting, which leaves his world shattered. Tully not only discloses that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer with a remaining life expectancy of a few months: he wants James to be his “campaign manager” to travel to a clinic in Switzerland, specialised in assisted dying.

The source material behind this BBC adaptation is Andrew O’Hagan’s autobiographically inspired novel Mayflies, which won the Book Prize of the Los Angeles Times in 2020.

While the book’s narrative is split into two timelines, the show is primarily set in the present, with repeated flashbacks juxtaposing the adult protagonist’s evanescence with the brazen sense of immortality experienced in his youth. Sporadically, archival images are spliced into the memories, and pop culture references to music, films and football flesh out both worlds.

With its focus on male friendship, the show offers a stirring concomitant portrayal of vulnerability, self-determination and bodily autonomy. None of these themes necessarily spark an immediate association with the usual depiction of men on screen, but down to the sentimental and reflective elements, the story is told in an entirely unconstrained and veracious manner.

The casting is simply sublime: many of the young actors and their older counterparts bear a striking physical resemblance or manage to capture the exact same essence of their character. With his riveting performance as free-spirited Tully, Tony Curran, whose CV lists supporting roles in the three-digit range, clarifies once and for all that he is leading man material.

As a television two-parter, Mayflies feels a little stuck between a proper miniseries and a two-hour film; both formats could have brought their own set of advantages. In their current state, the episodes sadly don’t always make the best use of their limited time.

Selina Sondermann

Mayflies is released on BBC iPlayer on 27^th December 2022.

Watch the trailer for Mayflies here: