The major problem, then, lies in its pace, which is a little too bucolic to handle what’s, at its core, hardly groundbreaking material. We’ve seen the mechanics and rhythms of these kinds of stories before: the lying, the cheating, the narcissism involved in believing that their story will be different from all the other affairs throughout history. Furtive text conversations lay out the terms of their relationship; the two meet up, sleep together, worry what their friends/spouses might think; rinse, repeat. Where “Normal People” charts the devastating impact of first monogamous love, “Conversations with Friends”’ juggles a power dynamic—wealthier, married man in a fling with a young college student—we’ve seen before, and not in a way that opens up many new layers.
The sleepy performances don’t help either. Oliver is admittedly a tremendous talent, and she builds layers of complexity within Frances’ narcissism, which turns her from doe-eyed innocent to emotional wrecking ball over the course of the series. Rooney’s works often center around young Irish protagonists whose passivity hides a kind of self-centered inaction, and that bears out in Frances’ carefully calibrated shyness. “I don’t think you think anyone else is real,” Bobbi spits at her late in the series, and she’s not wrong; Frances, through Oliver’s deeply honest performance, evinces the way we’re all wrapped up in ourselves when we’re young, chasing feelings and damn the consequences. It’s a solid debut turn, bubbling with orgasmic joy and agonizing pain (both emotional and physical, in the case of a recurring reproductive health issue that suddenly throws her fling into perspective).
But her scenes with Alwyn (mostly operating with a kind of mumbled passivity) don’t so much spark as fizzle, dialogue rolling past whispered Irish lilts with all the volume of a stage whisper. (It doesn’t help that most of Nick’s real issues, ones involving depression and his marriage woes with Melissa, are told to Frances by other characters rather than shown.) And apart from a couple of fascinating back-and-forths with Frances in the last quarter of the show, Kirke gets exceedingly little to do as ‘the wife’. As a followup to Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones’ wistful chemistry in “Normal People,” it falls a bit short.