Starstruck series three review – Rose Matafeo’s romcom ditches the love story (and is better than ever)

This is no longer a will-they-won’t-they series. Instead, it focuses on the joys of friendship – and becomes more enjoyable, relatable and far more moving

About 90 seconds into the third series of Starstruck, it becomes clear that Rose Matafeo’s rom-sitcom has a major problem. The action picks up precisely where we left off at the end of the second series, namely a snogging sesh in the middle of a big pond, as Matafeo’s Jessie finally gets (back) together with her on-off love interest, film star Tom Kapoor, with whom she had a one-night stand in the show’s first episode. Cue a pacy montage charting the giddy highs, then inescapable lows, of their relationship, before Tom walks out of their shared home for good.

When we rejoin her two years later, Jessie seems largely over it. But Tom’s departure has had an existential impact on the show itself: surely we must now also wave goodbye to the titular conceit – whether the normal girl and the famous guy can ever make it work – too? (Starstruck is essentially a gender-swapped Notting Hill, with a more realistic grasp of London property prices.) Yet the show, initially at least, isn’t quite ready to let go of its central gimmick, which means it spends its third outing raking over the embers of the romance, from genuine attempts to move on with new people to tentative reconnection.

Continue reading...

from The Guardian https://ift.tt/bd3nXUZ

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two years after Buffalo mass shooting, an art exhibit focuses on the victims

A few months after 14 May 2022, a curator sought out three local artists. The resulting exhibition, Before and After Again, is thought to be the first of its kind Two years ago, a white supremacist drove 200 miles to Buffalo, New York, and opened fire in a grocery store in the city’s predominantly Black East Side neighborhood, killing 10 people and injuring three. Though the Tops Friendly Markets where the racist mass shooting took place has been remodeled, and most of the country has forgotten about the violence that occurred on 14 May 2022, Buffalo’s East Side is forever changed. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/mqu1LFv
Read more

£1 Thursdays review – nightclubbing, sex talk and big decisions

Finborough theatre, London A mix of sweet observations about female friendship and cheeky brazenness about sex, Kat Rose-Martin’s play finds two young women at a crossroads in their lives In the cold air outside a sticky nightclub in Bradford, 17-year-olds Stacey and Jen are at a crossroads. In one direction lies the world they know: the family stress, the looming exams, the pumping pop beats at the club where they’ll reliably pull boys from school. In the other direction lies an uncertain path, and questions of who they are apart from one another, whether they could be the first in their families to go to university, and how to afford it if they do. Constantly on their minds, while they’re drunkenly dancing the nights away, is where they’ll end up, and what to do if they are the ones left behind. Thoughtful if not revelatory, £1 Thursdays covers an uneasy period of big decisions in these characters’ lives, as the gap between them widens. Monique Ashe-Palmer (Six) is ebullient as St
Read more

Eric Trump testifies ‘I don’t recall’ when asked about involvement in Trump Organization valuation - live

Prosecutors ask Eric Trump about financial statements and executives who cited calls with him for valuation, but he testifies he doesn’t remember conversation Sign up for Trump on Trial: a free newsletter on all the latest court developments Prosecutor Colleen Faherty asked Donald Trump Jr whether it’s a fair statement that he was generally familiar with the overall finances of the Trump Organization between 2011 and the present. “I would think so, yes,” Trump Jr replied, Law360’s Stewart Bishop reports. Continue reading... from The Guardian https://ift.tt/wzrfXa1
Read more