Conversations with Friends

From the creators of Normal People comes Conversations with Friends, a Hulu original series that discusses the beauty of love and heartbreak.

Head over to Hulu to begin streaming episodes of Conversation with Friends today. Read on to learn about the powerful story of Conversations with Friends. The new Hulu series depicts love, both platonic and romantic, in a way we’ve never seen before.

Conversations with Friends: A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the new Sally Rooney drama · The crew reveal why it was harder to adapt than Normal People ...

“It took a little while to get our heads around the decisions we’d made – from lens choices to pace and tone,” he says. “The perspective of the book is very much inside Frances’s head, and a very small amount of that is actually articulated [out loud],” she says. The shoot was made up of long days – Abrahamson tended to be on set from 7am and stay for twelve hours – and not free from its challenges. “I don’t think any of us expected to find someone as new as Alison, who is fresh out of drama school,” she says. “It was a very free-form discussion of its strengths – what we thought would translate well on to television – and where we thought it needed to be bolstered.” “We wanted to find a way for the friendship to start quite organically, rather than them being the subject of her work,” Norton explains. “We were quite open minded about casting; I didn’t have a remarkably strong visual image of who we wanted for Frances and Bobbi,” she says. “Although I had made a film with Joe Alwyn – The Souvenir Part II – and I remember thinking there was something Nick-ish about him. “I also took all the dialogue in the book and put it into a file. But it is like developing a photograph: as it comes to life, you see that the tones are quite different.” “I remember the first day as sort of being knocked around a boxing ring,” says director Lenny Abrahamson. “I always hate the first day on anything. “We were already working on Conversations, so it didn’t feel like the big undertaking that it might have done.”

Bobbi (Sasha Lane), Frances (Alison Oliver) and Melissa (Jemima Kirke) enjoyed a dip in the sea together (Picture: BBC/Element Pictures/Enda Bowe).

‘I got in the water, I got out. ‘It’s easy to see Melissa as not one dimensional, but less dimensional. It wasn’t practice, it was to see if we could swim. This led to one particularly notable scene, where the journalist takes Bobbi and Frances swimming in the Irish Sea. ‘What really added insult to injury was a week or two before we were asked to practice right and to go into the water in Belfast which was worse. When we started shooting, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, we were gonna be doing this.

TV writers, take note: leave the really good books alone, please. Find your own stories.

It can be gilded and hushed, as per Atonement; it can be bare and bleak (The Road), it can career from the sublime to the ridiculous. Whenever I think about Normal People now, I don’t picture Connell and Marianne the way I used to picture them, I picture Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones; both beautiful to watch on screen, but not remotely the people I had in my head before I watched it. Once you “see” the book on screen in front of you, you can’t “un-see” it. I have never watched so many films, so much TV, in my life – and certainly not at three in the morning. I didn’t have anything else to do, plus, it felt like lunacy not to watch the programme everyone was talking about. So is Beautiful World, Where Are You – her latest, which I adored, even though I’d be hard-pushed to tell you much about what Eileen and Alice (the two main characters) actually do.

The 12-part series is adapted from the debut novel by Normal People's Sally Rooney. Jemima Kirke and Sasha Lane in Conversations with Friends. Element ...

But I hope it provokes discussion as well, just like it did for the book.” I just know that from reading the book. And by the end of it, they might be like, ‘OK, well…’ I think it'll just shift," she said.

Conversations With Friends is the latest Sally Rooney novel to be adapted for the small screen, following in the footsteps of Hulu's Normal People.

While Frances and Nick embark on a serious affair, Bobbi and Melissa openly flirt in front of everybody. If you are feeling up to it, you can binge-watch the entire series in one go or alternatively, watch at your leisure. The 12-part series tells the story of 21-year-old college student Frances as she navigates romantic relationships and friendships. Alex Murphy plays the role of Alex Murphy in Conversations With Friends, Frances's close friend at university and colleague. Sasha Lane plays the role of Bobbi in Conversations With Friends, Frances' best friend and ex-girlfriend. After years of waiting, Conversations With Friends is finally available to stream and download via Hulu in the U.S. and the BBC iPlayer in the U.K. now.

Plus, a bunch of big-network finales, new anime from Netflix, an emotional reality series, and more.

As the Cold War rages, Army sergeant Harry Palmer (Joe Cole) finds himself jailed for eight years, his prospects abruptly torn away. The cast of this ’60s-set British espionage thriller includes Lucy Boynton and Tom Hollander. The story follows a boss in a trillion-dollar industry who discovers a shocking truth and creates a black ops conspiracy to hide the evidence. Halo (Paramount+, Thursday, 3:01 a.m.) As Nick and Frances’ relationship blooms (and ebbs and flows), Conversations With Friends offers glimmers of a fascinating proposition. Directed by Ryoutarou Makihara and produced by Tetsuya Nakatake, this anime is set in a world where humans and vampires once co-existed peacefully. Emmy Rossum follows up her long Shameless run with a starring role in her dream project, Angelyne. An unrecognizable Rossum plays the titular Angelyne, who was famous for being famous in 1980s Los Angeles, when more than 200 billboards featuring her likeness popped up across town. The Time Traveler’s Wife follows Henry DeTamble (Theo James), whose ability to fall through time (while always naked!) impacts his relationship with his wife Clare (Rose Leslie). But the show is less a complex sci-fi romance and more unwittingly corny and creepy. The show centers on the quiet Frances (Alison Oliver) and her outgoing BFF Bobbi (Sasha Lane). They befriend novelist Melissa (Jemima Kirke), with Bobbi instantly developing a crush on her, while Frances falls for Melissa’s husband, Nick (Joe Alwyn). What follows are messy triangles that threaten to ruin multiple lives. The Doctor Who writer and showrunner brings Audrey Niffenegger’s novel to life in six new episodes. “The novel is better” feels like such a tired line but there is something to be said about the expansive interiority prose allows and the way a TV adaptation can reduce rather than distill such a sensibility. All times are Eastern. [Note: The weekend edition of What’s On drops on Fridays.]

Conversations with Friends stars Alison Oliver and Joe Alwyn tell What to Watch about their drama from the makers of Normal People.

I’m just starting out and it's nice to feel you get this world and these kinds of people, then you can let the story take its own route." Alison Oliver: "For all its turbulence and chaos, it's good for them. Then Nick’s relationship with Melissa takes a new form and Frances' relationship with Bobbi grows and changes because of her relationship with Nick too. Joe Alwyn: "And I like Nick. He’s guarded and enigmatic at the beginning, but you learn more about why he’s the way he is and perhaps find empathy with him for what he's been through. Joe Alwyn: "Frances and Nick are used to being defined by these strong characters next to them. But I think they find safety and something that's more than just attraction."

The singer, who has been dating Joe Alwyn since 2016, visited the set of the BBC Drama.

Viewers based in the US can watch the 12-part series on Hulu. "It's approached like a stunt – you are creating an illusion. "They give you intimacy garments, like skin-coloured knickers, and you can ask for pads and stuff to protect you and create distance between the other person," she revealed.

Sally Rooney's second TV adaptation is an aggressively uneventful affair stuffed with meaningful looks and strained silences. Why doesn't anyone speak?

The debuting Oliver probably won’t be catapulted to fame like Paul Mescal – this series is unlikely to capture the public imagination in the same way – but her ability to make ordinariness interesting and watchfulness intriguing bodes well for her career. Gone is the sense of the shifting sands of personal identity, the passion that can be poured into friendship, the time and energy expended on trivia that powered the book. Normal People kept the unselfconscious hyper-articulacy and self-analysis of the book’s characters, which made them grating at times but also made them real. They are taken into the adult world of glamorous writer Melissa (Jemima Kirke) and thereby introduced to her handsome husband, Nick (Joe Alwyn). Bobbi and Melissa are entranced by each other’s fabulousness, while their more introverted partners inevitably (to anyone over the age of, say, 28?) begin a quiet affair. I like a mood piece as much as the next person, but to stretch one out across a dozen episodes is to test the boundaries of even the most willing soul. Rooney’s adaptation, with Alice Birch, of her novel Normal People was a lockdown hit in 2020 for its rich, warm and well-observed tale of young love, sensitively directed by Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald. Now Birch, writing alone this time, and Abrahamson (directing seven episodes, and Leanne Welham the other five) have reunited.

Read on for the 11 key changes between Sally Rooney's bestselling novel and the brand-new Hulu limited series starring Alison Oliver, Joe Alwyn, Sasha Lane, ...

In the book, Bobbi shows up at the apartment and Bobbi says, "That was a weird email, but I love you too." Like the changes in communications between Nick and Frances, the long apology that Frances writes to Bobbi after she faints does not take the form of a rushed email. The two do have a confrontational-esque phone call in the books, after Frances discovers Melissa has sent Bobbi her story and Melissa says to Frances, "Why did you fuck my husband?" In the show, Bobbi calls Frances to tell her, "That was a pretty sold email...it was good. One of the pivotal moments in Conversations with Friends (the novel) is a long email Melissa sends Frances after she learns of the affair. In that conversation, Melissa says much of what is written in the email. In the book, Melissa is a magazine writer working on a story about Frances and Bobbi's spoken-word poetry. Quietly and with a tiny mouth I sad said: 'no.'" The difference between "I doubt it" and "no" are miles apart. Therefore, later on, in episode eight, Melissa's book launch is an entire scene—in Rooney's novel, Bobbi and Frances merely go to a reading that an essay of Melissa's appears in. The dialogue begins similarly, with Bobbi saying, "Frances has a secret boyfriend," but then it completely goes in a different direction. Throughout the rest of the story, Frances thinks about the New Testament and often references biblical characters, but this doesn't factor into the show at all. The biggest change in characters from Sally Rooney's novel to the TV show is that Bobbi became a Black American woman.

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The first episode of Conversations with Friends will air on 15 May on BBC Three at 10pm. OX, a Michelin-star restaurant in the Northern Irish capital, also appears in the series as the setting of a dinner date between Nick and Frances. Much like Normal People, Conversations with Friends features Trinity College in Dublin as a backdrop to events and a meeting point for several of the main characters.

We're back to the Sally Rooney Cinematic Universe, this time investigating the inner lives of four friends/lovers. A recap of episode one of Hulu's ...

Bobbi wants to know if Nick feels “conflicted” about playing a gay character in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Nick counters that Brick could be bisexual, to which Bobbi responds by outing Frances. Rude! Also, I feel like our show is doing Frances no favors — she’s supposed to be the more reserved of the pair, but in the book she gets a clever reply in here (“I’m kind of an omnivore”), whereas in the show she is awfully … blank. Nick arrives late but makes it in time for most of Bobbi and Frances’s performance of a poem called “Diamonds,” which makes exactly the points about engagement rings that you might expect (capitalist, sexist, bad) and afterward, Melissa tells them it’s brilliant. By the next day, Bobbi is already making grand proclamations and cutting insights based on her one (1) interaction with Nick and Melissa as a couple. A very chic and just-so-older woman is by the bar after the performance, someone Bobbi and Frances immediately clock as “that writer.” Her name is Melissa (she’s played by Jemima Kirke); with her red lipstick and silky top and hair bleached blonde to the roots, she scans as sooo much more sophisticated and mature than Bobbi and Frances. She compliments the girls by calling their performance “sweet but ruthless.” Bobbi does the introductions: Frances is “the writer,” and she, Bobbi, is “the muse.” She also blurts out that she and Frances used to have sex but don’t anymore. Melissa and Bobbi escape for a cigarette so that Nick and Frances can do the Sally Rooney special: awkward conversation between people who hate talking and would prefer to skip to the part where all their communication happens via text. I assume this is a sort of save-the-cat situation to endear us to Bobbi, but the episode has not really set us up to think she’s a very good friend, no? Bobbi and Frances have the easy intimacy of people who are used to falling asleep on each other’s couches and in each other’s arms. As Melissa and Bobbi disappear to shower (separately) (… for now?!), Nick gets home. I cannot tell yet if this story is a period piece set in 2017 or if Frances is using wired headphones in a “wired headphones are actually back now” kind of way … if you see any clues to suggest either one, please leave them in the comments. Frances and Bobbi’s friendship goes back to secondary school, where the “radiantly attractive” Bobbi, who had a penchant for performative acts of progressivism (piercing her nose, writing “fuck the patriarchy” on the school wall) was the show-off whose relationship with Frances brought Frances out of her shell and into her own. (Rooney was 26.) As Vulture’s Chief Sally Rooney Content Correspondent — I recapped Normal People — I am very excited to return to the book that designated Rooney as the voice of a generation (or a voice of a … you know). I’ve read it, but I promise no spoilers for those who have not. Actually, in the novel, everybody is Irish, and now in the show, only Frances and Nick, who we’ll meet shortly, still are; Melissa, Nick’s wife, is British.

The drama, which tells the story of former lovers Frances and Bobbi is the second adaptation that author Sally Rooney has brought to the small screen following ...

While Melissa and Bobbi flirt with each other openly, Nick and Frances embark on an intense, secret affair that is surprising to them both. Lenny Ambrahamson, director of Conversations With Friends said of the drama: "It questions monogamy and how a person could love more than one other person in a way which is ethical." You can read more about the show's connection to Normal People here and all about the cast, here.

Well, we know at least why Nick's so keen to have Frances around in particular, as the two awkward halves of the couples unite in their discomfort towards all ...

But this is a telling point for the best friends, as now is the perfect time for Frances to tell Bobbi that she kissed Nick, and for them to laugh and make a joke of it. “We’re not going home, by the way!” is Bobbi’s excellent way of getting Frances to head to a club in one of the only displays of 20-something fun the duo have got into so far. A bit of forced small talk later (“Sorry if this is awkward,” Frances tells Nick, only making things even more awkward), Frances says they should probably talk about the kiss. Presumably covertly Googling “Taylor Swift Boyfriend Tuxedo”, she shows a picture of him, to which her mum says: “Christ, he’s handsome,” which is obviously the correct response. Frances can only look on like a wallflower – she’s clearly been privy to the Bobbi show many times before – so goes for a little poke around the house. Bobbi holds her own at the literati party, quipping to a former stand-up comedian who left the profession to get married and have kids: “because after that, nothing was funny?” Melissa looks on approvingly.

The casting of Joe Alwyn as Nick Conway in Conversations With Friends has left viewers of the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney's 2017 book of the same name ...

Normal People was the most watched show on BBC Three ever with more than 23 million downloads globally and over 6.75 million devices watching the first episode. 'Joe is playing Nick how he was written in the book,' wrote one person. I know he’s reserved and quiet in the book but he’s still soulful and dynamic!!! A point I forgot to make, Nick doesn’t come off as an older man at all so it made that whole storyline not work. I just felt his portrayal made him seem so flat #ConversationswithFriends.' Conversations with Friends airs on BBC Three in the UK, with all episodes available on iPlayer. It is available on Hulu in the US The novel and trailer alike are packed full of racy moments which will set viewers hearts thumping and will likely follow in the footsteps of author Sally's 2020 series Normal People, which wowed viewers with its intimate, realistic sex scenes. Opinions: After the series was released for streaming by the BBC and on Hulu this weekend, viewers questioned whether Joe was right for the role, with the book's character being older Question mark: The casting of Joe Alwyn as Nick Conway in Conversations With Friends has left viewers of the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney's 2017 book of the same name baffled However, after the series was released for streaming by the BBC and on Hulu this weekend, viewers questioned whether Joe was right for the role, with the book's character being older. The casting of Joe Alwyn as Nick Conway in Conversations With Friends left viewers of the BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney's 2017 book of the same name baffled after it was released on Sunday. Joe, 31, stars alongside Jemima Kirke, 37, as married couple Nick and Melissa who become involved with a pair of students who were once also an item, with the series picking up on the success of Sally's 2018 novel Normal People, which was adapted into a ratings smash hit TV series in 2020.

Sally Rooney's glum characters get an outing in a chemistry-free drama that isn't a patch on Normal People.

Thank goodness for Kirke and for Sasha Lane as Bobbi, Francis’s best friend and former girlfriend – their characters are extroverts and easy conversationalists, both of which are sorely needed to pep things up. Rooney throws in an alcoholic dad and some endometriosis, just to lighten the mood. After the all-conquering hit that was Normal People, the same team has brought us another Sally Rooney adaptation, Conversations with Friends (BBC Three). But lightning doesn’t strike twice.

Meanwhile others criticised English actor Alwyn's attempt at an Irish accent, with one writing: 'Joe Alwyn's Irish accent is painful.' Viewers brand ...

Nick Hilton writes: 'Though it is undoubtedly slow, solipsistic, and self-satisfied, the show has an ambient appeal. Viewers based in the US can watch the 12-part series on Hulu. At 12 episodes it is also long and can feel rather baggy.' It is television designed to be watched out of the corner of your eye while scrolling through Instagram, peering in at strangers on two screens simultaneously.' Frances (played by magnetic newcomer Alison Oliver) is a bisexual student at Trinity College Dublin who performs spoken-word poetry with her ex-girlfriend, Bobbi. Normal People has been the most watched show on BBC Three ever with more than 23 million downloads globally and over 6.75 million devices watching the first episode. And The Irish Times' Ed Power went one step further, describing it as 'superior' to Normal People, writing: 'It feels more substantial than Normal People. Rooney fans will lap it up. This adaptation is a watered down version of it. Can the BBC's second Sally Rooney adaptation possibly live up to Normal People mania? Marianka Swain writes: 'The team behind Normal People reunite to bring another soulful, sexy and complex Sally Rooney creation to life on screen. Bobbi American?! Nick English!? Apart from Frances, the chemistry felt cringe. A point I forgot to make, Nick doesn’t come off as an older man at all so it made that whole storyline not work.

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton are back! Make sure you know how to stream every episode of Conversations with Friends free online without Hulu.

Make sure you know how to watch a Conversations with Friends live stream from where you are. For Conversations with Friends, you may wish to choose 'UK' for BBC iPlayer. Follow our guide to watch a free Conversations with Friends live stream from abroad with a VPN. If you like the idea of a millennial, Normal People-style take on Jane Austen's Emma, helmed by an Oscar-nominated director, Conversations with Friends is for you. You can use it to watch on your mobile, tablet, laptop, TV, games console and more. Conversations with Friends is free to watch on BBC iPlayer in the UK. Away from UK this week?

Led by Joe Alwyn, Alison Oliver, Sasha Lane, and Jemima Kirke, Hulu's Sally Rooney adaptation Conversations with Friends doesn't land the TV show the way ...

This adaptation mostly mimics the tone of Normal People and its torrid and frustrating affair between two lifelong friends. The purpose, in turn, of adaptation is to change and morph the form or the structure, or realign the characters: to take something once two-dimensional and make it three-dimensional. In the book, it’s a series of flirtations, quick and direct, a sense of danger and escape from both of their all-too-normal lives. At one point in the text conversation between Frances and Bobbi, Frances highlights the word “feelings.” She doesn’t tap through; rather she simply analyzes it, as if selecting it will provide some insight. Here, they sit around tables awkwardly, dialogue stilted, struggling to reach a point of conclusion before they can be released back in the wild to mope. Lane — so surprising in American Honey — plays Bobbi bitter and biting, with none of the unpredictable spark she carries in the novel. The point of adaptation is not direct transposition, of course. The thrill of the novel was the betrayal of two passive characters, selfishly acting out against their active and unpredictable other halves. It’s a shame, then, that the BBC and Hulu adaptation of Conversations with Friends has been woefully dumbed down and ironed out, full of awkward silences and unearned longing. In the novel, the reason for the affair is multifold: It’s an examination of perceived power and sexual curiosity (on the part of Frances, who has only previously been with women) as well as biting portrayal of the selfishness of young people. In the last episode of Succession’s second season, Shiv Roy — in the midst of an argument with her husband Tom — is clutching a copy of Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, which she brought with her to read out on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. Indeed, for a show set in approximately 2018 or 2019, this would be the book to have on the beach. The dialogue is engaging and smart, the characters talking of Slavoj Žižek and Patricia Lockwood, their words often hiding underlying power struggles and emotional tensions between them.

Forming an undeniable bond after being introduced through Bobbi (Frances' ex-girlfriend/current best friend) and Melissa (Nick's very current wife), the pair's ...

Promising to have a bit more space, Frances next throws herself into her final years of studies, and gets her life back on track. Her sexual tension with Nick is immediate, and when they finally give into it, the pair’s relationship soon consumes every moment of her time. Frances doesn’t show Bobbi the essay, Melissa eventually does, and again the secret ultimately causes her to walk away from her longtime friend. This later paves way for Melissa and Nick to have a more open discussion about the state of their marriage, and eventually they start sleeping together again. This then escalates when she accuses Bobbi of being “jealous”, leading Bobbi to consider that a homophobic comment. After Nick comes clean about his affair with Frances, Melissa finds herself in a bind as to what to do next.

Sally Rooney's first novel Conversations with Friends has been adapted into a 12-part series, airing on BBC Three and Hulu.