The Big Picture

One Day faithfully adapts the source material and is well-paced, allowing viewers to fully immerse themselves in the characters’ story. The nuanced performances by Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall add depth to their characters. Despite this, the series feels unbalanced, with Dexter’s side of the story receiving more focus and Emma’s character lacking agency.

What happens when “the one who got away” never fully gets away, and sometimes, you’re not even sure if they’re “the one”? That’s the question posed by Netflix’s new limited series One Day, based on the book by David Nicholls, which follows two friends, Emma (Ambika Mod) and Dexter (Leo Woodall), over 20 years of friendship as they go from recent university graduates to full adults, with all the highs and lows that come with it. The series is a faithful adaptation and benefits from the 14-episode format, which gives the audience time to fully immerse themselves in Dex and Em’s story. The result is a story that is beautifully depicted, yet can at times feel unbalanced and frustrating.

One Day Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. Release Date February 8, 2024 Creator Nicole Taylor Cast Leo Woodall , Ambika Mod , Amber Grappy , Brendan Quinn Main Genre Comedy Seasons 1

What Is ‘One Day’ About?

On July 15, 1988, on the night of their graduation from the University of Edinburgh, Dexter and Emma meet at their graduation ball, hit it off, and spend the night together. Though nothing physically intimate happens between them, their one night of talking and conversation blossoms into a decades-long friendship where Emma and Dexter see each other through their professional, personal, and romantic highs and lows, navigating the changing nature of their relationship over the years.

Like the book on which it’s based, each episode is set on that titular “one day” — that is, July 15 — over nearly 20 years, catching up with the pair, and showing how they’ve grown and changed as people, and, as a result, how their friendship has grown and changed. Each episode simply takes place on the same day each year, no matter where they’re at personally, rather than making it a contrivance where they promise to see each other on the same day each year, no matter what. Instead, it’s pure coincidence, and not one that either of them ever remarks on, making the story feel that much more grounded and real and true.

‘One Day’s Structure Is Both a Strength and a Weakness

With a fourteen-episode run, One Day has plenty of time to dive into that specific day each year, and therefore spend plenty of time with Dex and Em, and get into the nitty-gritty of their character development. With the pacing of the story so spaced out, it makes the time they spend apart feel far less egregious since it then juxtaposes so nicely with the time they do spend together. The audience really feels the absence when the show focuses on just Dex or Emma, making the episodes, or “days” they do spend together, feel like a visual sigh of relief, even if things aren’t going according to plan for them in the moment.

But this strength winds up also being one of the series’ biggest weaknesses from a character point of view. Because the audience spends so long with Emma and Dex, the minutiae of their lives builds up to make their stories more tragic and infuriating, respectively, than perhaps was the storytellers’ intention. Dexter is privileged and self-destructive by design, but the longer we spend with him, the more it begs the question of why Emma still puts up with him. Even when he has supposedly learned from his mistakes, and tried to turn things around, it never feels fully convincing. Yes, personal growth is not a linear path, sometimes it is circular, but the show later does show that under certain circumstances, Dex is capable of meaningful change. This is something that feels more like a fault of the script, which was tasked with prolonging his personal conflicts to fit the run time, than of Woodall’s performance, which does manage to salvage Dex’s swoonier aspects, even when you’re wishing Emma would just chuck a notebook at his head and be done with him.

I’ve Seen This Film Before, and I Didn’t Like The Ending
Image via Netflix

I’m not going to actually spoil the ending, but suffice it to say the story is an adaptation of a book, and the 2011 movie, and it doesn’t change the major plot beats. One Day is a story about the mundane, the everyday aspects of life, and is much less an escapist sort of romance as it is a mirror held up to our own lives. This is especially true of Emma, who is played to heartbreaking perfection by Ambika Mod. She is someone who had an idea of where she wanted her life to go when she was a recent graduate and struggles to meet that ideal until suddenly she doesn’t. Through her determination, things begin to work out. The one downside is that she suffers from the same odd writing quirk as too many heroines do — Jane (Lucy Hale) in Which Brings Me to You comes to mind — where a lot of bad things happen to her, but never really as a result of her actions. Dex has no problem being the architect of his own troubles, but Emma’s always seems to come from an outside source. This might just be chalked up to the fear of writing an unlikable woman, but ultimately makes her character arc as a whole feel like an exercise in unfairness. Yes, life is unfair in myriad small ways, but with no true catharsis for her, it all just feels a bit nihilistic.

As frustrating as parts of One Day were, that’s not to say the series is entirely without merit. Woodall and Mod are wonderful and have fantastic chemistry together — arguably too much chemistry if you want viewers to reasonably believe that either of them ever doubts the possibility of the other as a romantic partner. The series has moments of thoughtfulness and is a quiet reflection on living every day to the fullest, making it worth the watch for those who enjoy their love stories on the more bitter side of bittersweet.

One Day REVIEWOne Day is a series that faithfully adapts the source material, but can feel a little unbalanced at times. ProsAmbika Mod and Leo Woodall both bring something really nuanced to their performances. The series is well-paced and takes its time where it suits the story best. ConsThe series feels unbalanced in Dexter’s favor. Emma’s side of the story lacks agency overall.

One Day premieres on Netflix in the U.S. on February 8.

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