Cast your mind to summer where the days are long and the forecast usually calls for lots of sun. Here in America, there are not a lot of summer holidays besides the Summer Solstice. However, if one were to go across the pond to England, one would find a holiday called St. Swithin’s Day. Kind of like America’s Groundhog Day, St. Swithin’s Day is about how if it rains on that one day the rest of summer’s sunny days will be gone. In a sense, the people of England will have lost the chances they thought they had to enjoy more good vacation weather. If you hold this concept in your mind’s eye, you can better understand how Netflix’s One Day forms itself to blow the viewer away in awe of an endearing love story.
One Day the show is based on a book of the same name that was first adapted into a movie. It starts its story at a university in Edinburgh where by chance, Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall) and Emma Morely (Ambika Mod) meet at a graduation party. After a supposed one-night stand on this St. Swithin’s Day in 1988, the show takes the longer route of telling the story of Dexter and Emma because it does not give in to the traditional love story. Instead, each episode puts the viewer through their paces with Dexter and Emma always seeming to be on different pages than each other. This could prove tiresome for the viewer considering the length of the show but what makes the show truly endearing is its main message which revolves around one of the most fickle things in life: time.
In truth, this show is worth watching because it beautifully paints a picture of how time is perhaps one of the most complex aspects of life to handle. Time can push each one of us to move in and out of sync with someone as well as ourselves and who we become because of what time does to us. When it comes to One Day, it talks about the perils of time that we all know but also one tendency that perhaps many of us may shove aside: thinking we’ll always have more time to get something right.
Being that I had watched the movie, I knew what to expect about the plot of the show. What I couldn’t predict was how the actors would interpret these characters. Ambika Mod truly moves through each episode with such fluidity that makes the viewer forget that Mod is playing a character. Emma then captures all of our hearts with her way with words, her wit, and her endlessly generous heart because of Mod’s grounded acting. Leo Woodall then comes in as a counterweight to Mod with Woodall playing Dexter with a cheekiness that at times shows the viewer what person Dexter could become but sometimes strays far away from. To this degree, Woodall and Mod play Dexter and Emma with a richness that cannot be shown in a movie.
Netflix’s version of Emma and Dexter also showcases in the truest sense, a love story of one person being ready for one part of their life too early while the other is ready too late. Emma from the time that the viewer meets her is someone who knows herself and who she wants to be. Mod plays Emma as someone who may need more time to find the right moment to become the person she wants to be and is a steady rock for all the people she loves. Dexter, on the other hand, is a case of how because he feels that he has endless time, goes down a destructive path. Woodall plays Dexter’s destructive tendencies as something that we all can be empathetic about but also know that Dexter had many chances to put things right sooner. To that degree, what One Day also gets right is how two people could be meant to be in each other’s lives, but, because one is perhaps a bit more lost in life than the other, they have less time together where everything falls into place.
Perhaps the concept of the wasted time in One Day is why two of its middle episodes feel a bit out of place. In these two episodes, the main characters do not interact but instead have a slide plot. Although the viewer will understand why these two episodes are needed, these two episodes tend to lag more than One Day’s other stronger episodes. Thus perhaps to make this show even more perfect than it already is, these two episodes could’ve been made into one. If these episodes were this way then perhaps the climax of the show, at the end, could’ve been elongated to capture an even fuller character arc. Alas, this one possible misstep is not glaring large that it changes the fact that One Day will be a show that you’ll talk about long after you’ve finished it.
Altogether, One Day is the show for you if you’re looking for something that isn’t as predictable as some of the other love stories of the past decade. It shows the viewer how time is a volatile thing that can ravage the future we dreamed up but also make us understand why certain things need more time to grow. The story of Emma and Dexter is one version of what happens when we let time get away from us. Emma and Dexter’s story may not be many people’s stories but rather will be a testament to how all of us should tell the people we love that we love them when we feel it.