If you're ever searching for proof of how make-or-break accents can be in film and TV, look no further than Anne Hathaway's turn as Emma Morley in 2011's One Day.
The very-much-not-a-northerner said she prepared for the role as the beloved Leeds lass by watching Emmerdale. Yet the final result was all over the shop. Many of the reviews at the time led on the scatter-gun accent, which seemed to wander between Hathaway's native Brooklyn, Yorkshire, and the Cotswolds.
As a result, the new Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls' best-selling novel for TV has one tally in its column from the off, because Ambika Mod's Leeds accent as Emma is flawless.
What to Read Next
For those who have seen the film or read the book or even dove head first into the One Day quagmire that was the late noughties by devouring both, you will find no bold departures from that plot here.
Dexter and Emma, played by The White Lotus's Leo Woodall and This Is Going to Hurt's Mod respectively, meet at their Edinburgh University graduation piss up and spend the night and the following St Swithin's Day together.
We then jump through every July 15 for the next two decades with them, like a charming flipbook with the highest production value you've ever seen. The fourteen – yes, that's a 'four' followed by a baffling 'teen' – episodes chart the ups and downs of their will-they-won't-they friendship.
One Day initially feels like it needs to get out of its own way. Its characters do baffling things like repeatedly saying sentences with the words "one day" in that very distracting order, drawing your attention to the artifice of the whole thing.
To some, One Day would of course feel very artifice-forward. The fact of its 20-year span told through annual snapshots has been labelled a gimmick, which the film adaptation might have been better to abandon altogether.
But here on the small screen, it's a comfortable fit, with each year taking up a single bite-sized episode. It's perfect for the streaming format. As the years start to gather pace, the episodes slip very easily by, in part aided by Netflix's hands-free Next Episode autoplay.
The episodic date stamps become incredibly helpful as we enter the twilight years, because despite apparently burning through decades, neither Mod nor Woodall ever look much older than their mid-to-late twenties.
Once Em and Dex enter their thirties, they start to just state their age. "Really?" you wonder. It's as if they're saying it to try and convince us of the fact rather than because it's empirically true.
Still, it's better than the Frankenstein horror show we could have been subjected to with de-ageing software or ever-woeful prosthetics.
Spinning out the story contained in a 107-minute film into a 14-episode arc feels like the type of bloated TV effort we might have come to expect from Netflix, yet it's a delight to linger in this pre-social media, pre-2008, pre-Brexit world of eternal summer. The glasses are rose-tinted, yes, but serene and snug fitting.
We mosey over plot points that were breezed past in the film, like Emma finding the inspiration to pursue her passion, which is here even treated to a sumptuous needle drop from The Cranberries.
The longer runtime also creates the space to fix some of the film's clunky and one-note character choices, turning them into actual human beings. Emma's boyfriend Ian, played by Jonny Weldon, is no longer simply a repulsive oaf, but instead a sweet if slightly daft man who simply isn't right for her.
Similarly, Emma isn't a stock shy loser, but a quick-witted and fairly judgemental woman who knows what she wants but can't quite summon the wherewithal to go for it. It mercifully isn't simply glasses-wearing good cop Em versus floppy-haired bad bloke Dex.
Dexter remains largely unchanged because his character has always been the hinge of this story. It may bill itself as a romcom, but really One Day is a coming-of-age tale in which Emma tends towards manic-pixie-dream-girl territory, especially once you've seen the whole saga unfold.
It turns out the extra breathing room can't fix all narrative snags. Without getting too deeply in the spoilerific weeds of a novel that came out in 2009 and sold millions of copies, Dex still only seems to start loving Em once she's taken off her glasses, straightened her hair and he's exhausted all other options.
The key absence here compared to the film is chemistry. At least in the beginning, these two quite simply don't seem to fancy each other.
The attraction does build later on, which may make sense if the episodes were shot in sequence. But that lack of convincing initial spark makes a strong case that these two would be fated for the post-grad simmering of friendship, with all contact eventually scattered to the winds of adulthood.
Just as you really start to mull on why exactly Em and Dex are drawn back to each other each year, their union comes. But as a result, it feels less like a powerful star-crossed liaison rooted in a lifetime of longing and missed opportunities and more like two people growing into each other and who are finally at the right stage for their grand amour.
"We grew up together," Dex writes in his notes before a key event. In the space where the slow-burn attraction should have been, we have something else that's still compelling. It's more of a tale of opportunities squandered and youth lost – even if they didn't even bother to grey Woodall's hair like they did Jim Sturgess's in the film.
For those uninitiated to One Day, the less said about what comes next, the better.
One Day is available to stream on Netflix from February 8.
You Might Like...
Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
