Normal People (2020)

I lost so much sleep when I discovered this heart-warming, heart-wrenching, and heart-breaking masterpiece. It's uncanny how I can relate to such genuine and unexplainable attraction and emotion. Everybody should be so lucky to find a love like this once in a lifetime.

I started watching this show, thinking it'd be another high school drama with pretty twenty-somethings acting out a middle-aged dude's regurgitation of every other high school drama. I figured that if it didn't suck too bad, it'd be good to have on in the background while I did other things. Instead, I found myself just stopping to watch. Everything about the show, the writing, acting, cinematography, design, etc. captures the tiny moments they way they feel instead of what they look like. It's like life. Beautiful, bland, and, oh, so painful.

One of the most beautiful tv shows I've ever had the pleasure of watching. Incredible chemistry. Incredible written. beautifully heartbreaking

This series is fantastic. It's pace, the acting and the soundtrack all add to a beautiful simple story.

Having spent lots of time in Ireland with my partners family I know that this is an important social subject. Men/boys in the country struggle massively to express emotions and this does such a great job of showing how this effects life.

Amazing watch

It felt almost like reading a book where you envision the characters so vividly, you can almost touch them. The chemistry the two leads have, their acting, the cinematography, are all so well blended together, so seamless, it's palpable. A melancholy trip worth taking, if only to remind the ones past teenage years how vulnerable and all-engulfing a young love is.

Beautifully written characters and amazing acting. I LOVED this! I hadn't read the book this was adapted from but now want to and couldn't imagine anyone else being Marianne & Connell. Daisy Edgar-Jones' beautiful doe eyes and Paul Mescal's soulful gaze. I was mesmerised by the chemistry between these two. Very few love stories make my heart actually ache! I cried my way through 6 hours of this brilliance!

Just finished the show, and oh my was it every bit as good as I had hoped it would be and so much more. The book is pretty divisive and I expect the show to be as well, but every aspect of it is perfect, and I don't say this easily. The direction, cinematography, editing, writing, soundtrack, acting. The last three episodes hit you with a wave of emotions and made me tear up several times and I don't tear up easily. In a perfect world, this would be in conversation for Emmy noms and potentially even a win for Paul Mescal and who is imo pitch perfect as Connell, can't believe this is his first gig. Lenny Abraham also deserves strong praise for his direction here, Hattie MacDonald beautifully takes over from him, but he sets the tone and pace wonderfully. It's only April, but I doubt anything else will top this as my favorite show of the year.

But when the perfect pallet of directing, writing, cinematography and chemistry creates the perfect colourful vision, you are left in awe and swept up into the unknown. Normal People is just that, the perfect concoction. You ache when they ache and feel everything they feel, you believe Marianne and Connell belong together quite simply because the chemistry between Edgar-Jones and Mescal exists, which is rare and it creates an emotional ride that most people can relate to...

This absolute stunner of a TV series crept up on me in the way only the best stories do. Initially it seemed like an honest but moderate enough coming of age story, however soon the sweep of time takes us further along in these people's lives. We watch them grow as their world around them evolves. The melancholy atmosphere, yearning soundtrack, Misty Irish setting and expansive time span lends the whole experience an epic quality, like a modern War and Peace. It feels incredibly rich for a series only 6 hours long and at times left me as an emotional jelly. Let it wash over you and enjoy.

It can be hard to capture the words and feeling of a book into a visual and emotional piece of film, and this show does it. Sensual, tender, and intimate, it gently clutches your heart and makes you remember what it means to feel the complexities of love. Quiet, beautiful, and subtle, just a beautiful piece told perfectly by two absolute stars in the making.