Normal People (2020)

Normal People (2020) — Drama/Romance Normal People follows Marianne and Connell, two young people from the same small Irish town whose lives keep intersecting as they move from school to university and into early adulthood. The series is a quiet, character-driven study of a complicated on-again, off-again relationship: how attraction, class differences, shame, miscommunication and emotional vulnerability shape the way two people try to find themselves through each other. If you watch it, expect an intimate, slow-burning experience. The show favors close, unvarnished performances and lingering, understated scenes over plot fireworks; it trades melodrama for carefully observed moments — a glance, a phone call, a conversation that doesn’t go the way either of them needs. Emotionally raw and often awkward, it asks you to sit with longing, heartbreak and the small cruelties people inflict on each other even when they care deeply. Tonally the series is both tender and melancholic. It explores themes of class, mental health and identity with realism and restraint, and its filmmaking — close camera work, quiet sound design and deliberate pacing — pulls you very close to the characters’ interior lives. Viewers who like character-focused romance and coming-of-age stories will find it immersive and affecting; it rewards patience with powerful, believable emotional payoffs.

Actors: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Paul Mescal, Desmond Eastwood

Genres: Drama, Romance

8.4 /10 8.4 /10