One Day is a Wonderfully Heartbreaking Love Story

Confession: I have never seen the movie One Day. Between its 35% Rotten Tomatoes rating and Anne Hathaway’s questionable Yorkshire accent, I’ve never really felt compelled to. Even so, its reputation preceded it. “I cried my eyes out,” “It ruined my life,” “I never recovered from that ending.” And these are just some of the reviews I’ve heard. So when Netflix announced its own adaptation of David Nicholls’ 2009 novel, I finally read it. And it was immediately obvious to me that a series was the perfect format to adapt a novel so concerned with the passage of time. 

On its surface, the gist of One Day is quite simple. Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley meet on their last day of university and develop a complicated twenty-year relationship. We follow them on the same day, St. Swithin’s Day (July 15th), every year throughout that period. However, at the story’s conclusion, we discover that this seemingly unassuming date carries the weight of an important anniversary. 

The series sticks to this structure quite closely, spreading twenty years across 14, half-hour long episodes. The expansiveness of this timeline recalls the 2020 Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People. It is a series that similarly lets a simple, character-driven narrative sprawl across a longer swathe of episodes. It’s a format that suits the story of One Day wonderfully. The individual episodes are tightly paced, each convincingly encapsulating both a single day and a full year. The show’s soundtrack is an immediate standout, beautifully curating an atmosphere while grounding each episode in a specific time and place.

With a story like this, everything really comes down to the main leads. Leo Woodall (The White Lotus) and Ambika Mod (This is Going to Hurt) step into Dex and Em’s shoes and the casting feels pretty pitch perfect. Tousle-haired, tortured-eyed Woodall brings a necessary tenderness to Dexter, grounding his rakish rich boy charm in something vulnerable. It’s a quality that helps us keep coming back to root for him, even after Woodall (very, very convincingly) sells Dexter as being an occasional giant dirtbag.

Mod is a real star, warm, wise, and funny. She manages to bring Emma to life as someone trying to find herself and also increasingly self-assured and convinced of her self-worth. There’s something so gut-wrenching yet genuine about the fact that so much of the conflict stems from Emma’s unwillingness to accept less than what she deserves. Don’t get me wrong – the keyword in One Day is certainly yearning as Mod and Woodall make the best friends’ mutual longing palpable. Two parallel shots in which Emma watches an unaware Dexter exhibit this perfectly. Mod brilliantly portrays the raw agony of wanting someone yet feeling them just out of reach. But none of the depth of wanting sways Emma from choosing to be true to herself – even when that means letting go of Dexter. And it makes their reunions that much sweeter. 

Most importantly, their chemistry is fantastic. It’s certainly no small feat to depict a 20-year relationship that morphs from a one-night-stand to a friendship to a romance. And yet, the leads feel natural together, and their connection is authentic from the start. One Day shines in the quiet moments the two share, allowing the audience to witness as their experiences shape their interactions. The passage of time and periods of growth are remarkably convincing. Especially given the two young actors play everything from early twenties to early forties without heavy prosthetics or special effects. The show avoids these distractions, giving the acting and writing space to breathe. In doing so, it crafts a story that allows two characters and their relationship to flourish, taking you along for the journey in all its beauty, pain, and transformation.

And, hey, spoiler alert: I cried my eyes out. It kind of ruined my life. And I may never recover from that ending.