Netflix's 'One Day' Is Everything that Anne Hathaway's 'One Day' Is Not

By Dustin Rowles | TV | February 21, 2024 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | February 21, 2024 |

Back in 2011, I reviewed Anne Hathway’s film One Day. It is one of the more scathing reviews I’ve written, even relative to that era of movie reviews. I wrote that it is “enormously rotten,” that it is “tedious, depressing, hollow and insipid,” that it has “no fucking point” that “the romance is flatter than Michael Cera’s abs,” and “the story is about as interesting as the space between Cera’s stammers” (Cera was clearly a popular reference in 2011) and that “while there are a great many films that I dislike each year, there are few I hate as much as One Day.”

It’s thirteen years later, and while I do not love Netflix’s One Day as much as I hated Anne Hathaway’s One Day (a movie that essentially ended Hollywood’s attempt to make Jim Sturgess a leading man), I very much like the Netflix series. It’s essentially the same story — it drops in on two will-they-won’t-they characters on the same day every July for two decades — but the results are dramatically different.

A big reason for that is the intense chemistry between Dexter (White Lotus’s Leo Woodall) and Emma (Ambika Mod, This Is Going to Hurt), who meet for the first time on the night of their college graduation in the late ’80s. Their first encounter is a one-night stand they do not consummate despite the crackling energy between the two. It also sets the stage for why they remain such close friends instead of romantic partners over the years: He’s a charming douchebag from a privileged family, while she’s a brilliant but struggling wannabe writer from a markedly different background.

The differences in their socioeconomic status provide much of the tension between the two best friends over the years, as his good looks allow him effortless opportunities, mostly in front of a camera, while Emma struggles with waiting tables despite being considerably smarter than Dexter. His looks and her intelligence also needle each other’s insecurities, and yet they remain close even as they pair up with other romantic partners and drift in and out of each other’s lives.

It is hard to stress just how good both Woodall and Mod are here. Emma is instantly likable even with her Angela Chase neuroses, while Woodall has the slightly more difficult task of playing an arrogant cad with whom we are still smitten. Anyone who has seen him in White Lotus knows what a hill that is to climb, and there’s something about him that reminds me of young Michael Pitt and RPatz: Pretty, but wounded. Dexter and Emma do not look like they would fit together as a couple, and yet there is something almost electric about many of their encounters.

Based on the beloved novel by David Nicholls, the Nicole Taylor series is profoundly heartfelt, touching, and thoughtful. It is everything that the Anne Hathaway film is not in part because the 14 episodes give the series more time to breathe, explore the characters, and invest in the life trajectories of both. I don’t know why anyone thought that the story could fit in a 105-minute movie, although the care and detail the series gives to the lives of Dexter and Emma makes me angry about the 2011 movie all over again, especially that ending. I won’t spoil it for those unfamiliar with either the book or the movie, except to say that the story builds toward a right hook but ultimately delivers a left one. In a film that’s less than two hours, the punch would feel unearned and cruel. Here, it’s heartbreaking but lovely, a fitting end to a remarkable love story.

‘One Day’ is currently streaming on Netflix.