In a world wherethe romantic comedy is all but considered dead, anyone attempting to stake their claim on the last bit of available land inevitably tries to outdo what came before, proving thatinjecting the genre with something new is exactly what it needs to survivealongsideMarvelblockbustersandfestival darlings. Inevitably, that “something new” isalmost always hit or miss. The latter is the case withSundance Now’s new seriesThe Lovers, starringJohnny FlynnandRoisin Gallagheras a pair of peoplewho come together despite what many might deem irreconcilable differences.
The Lovers
It tells the story of Janet, a supermarket worker who doesn’t care about anything, including her life, and Seamus, a self-centered, political broadcaster. They find themselves inextricably drawn to each other.
The series follows Seamus O’Hannigan (Flynn), aBritish televisionpersonality brought toBelfast, Ireland to shoot a new political talk show. After he runs across Irish shop assistant Janet (Gallagher) when a standup goes wrong,the romantic pieces drop into place as they quickly fall for each otherand, despite Seamus having a committed girlfriend (Alice Eve), decide to give an affair a go — something that turns out to be harder than it seems for the both of them.
The Cast of ‘The Lovers’ Is Its Standout
As a connoisseur of romantic comedies, and specifically having grown up withRichard Curtis’s unique brand of Brit-coms, on the surface,The Loversseemed tailor-made for me. It certainly made smart choices in its leads,with Gallagher and Flynn able to command the screen in the very specific way required of a romantic duo, even if I like them more separately than I do together. They play off the popular “annoyance that morphs into love” trope that seems to be popular withmodern rom-coms, bouncing back and forth between soppy, full-throttle romance and wanting to rip each other to pieces — and not entirely without reason.
I was lucky enough to see Flynn perform live inSam Mendes’ staging ofThe Motive and the Cueat London’s National Theatre earlier this year, and it’s no exaggeration to say that he’s the kind of performer who makes use of every available second he has in front of an audience, exploiting every avenue he possibly can. He pumps as much verve into his characters as he can, whether that someone is likeThe Motive and the Cue’sRichard Burton(dubiously performed accent included) or Seamus, where that verve goes towards a kind of vulnerability that suits a rom-com hero. It propels him into wonderful moments of character work, like a midnight monologue to Janet at a train station,a moment so achingly romantic that it makes me wonder why Flynn hasn’t been dedicating his entire career to rom-coms, instead of picking projects like thatdisastrousDavid Bowiebiopiceven a diehard like myself couldn’t bear to watch.
‘The Lovers’ Misunderstands the Concept of a Rom-Com
Unfortunately, that verve also propels itself in other directions,ones that make me question why Sundance Now chose to label this series as a rom-com. Sure, Seamus is adorable when he wants to be, and Flynn has more than proven that he has all the chops of a leading man, but the rest of him leaves me wanting in the personality department. Am I meant to fawn over a romantic hero who’s so self-absorbed that it takes him until the last ten minutes of a three-hour series to commit to the girl whom he supposedly loves? Am I meant to think that love is expressed in verbal insults and selfish actions that would make me run screaming from anyone half as attractive as Flynn in the real world? Are the creators really trying to sell me on someone who would betray the person they’ve been with for six years because they’re thinking with the wrong internal organ?
In that,The Loverssolidly fails to get the pass, a bar that seems unbelievably difficult for many romantic comedies to clear. Not only is the very basis of Seamus and Janet’s relationship built on secrecy and lies — how cheating’s meant to be romantic, I’ll never know — butit fails to blossom into anything, despite committed performances from both Flynn and Gallagher. It’s a rollercoaster ride into disaster early on, as honesty takes a backseat to jokes that only half-land and an exploration of subject matter that might’ve been better suited for a traditional drama.
‘The Lovers’ Fails to Treat Its Darker Subjects With Respect
Rom-coms that deal with dark subjects are a tough nut to crack, andThe Loversbites off far more than it can chewwith just its premise alone, opening on Seamus being chased through suburban Belfast by a handful of teens rightfully incensed by an Englishman’s commentary on Ireland’s political landscape. He finds himself fence-hopping until he comes across Gallagher’s Janet, who is in the middle of an attempt to take her own life in her back garden — a tragedy that never gets explored beyond a simple monologue that serves more to stoke Seamus’s ego than it does to give us any insight into Janet’s inner life. She’s merely a crass Irish stereotype, but at least she’s more endearing than Seamus, whom I spent most of the series wanting to shove into a wall just to see what kind of obnoxious sound he’d make.
No better is the heavy-handedness with which the series treats political tensions between Ireland and the UK, turning something deeply tragic and painful like The Troubles into another bit of argument fodder for Seamus and Janet. There are absolutely pieces to the story that I’m missing as an American, nuances that I don’t understand as someone born at the end of the twentieth century who’s only ever read about said tensions in books. It’s a bias I’m entirely willing to admit, but it changes nothing about the core of the series, except to maybe confuse me all the more about why two people with such terrible personalities and diametrically opposed beliefs should end up together.The show acts like it’s better than the traditional rom-com by forcing its leads to constantly confront something terrible about themselves or each other, effectively nullifying the rare moments of romance that we actually get to experience.
It’s an unfortunate result, givenThe Lovers' promising start, and maybe if I were less committed to the revival of the dying genre that is rom-coms, I’d be less bothered by that fact. Butthe classic “enemies to lovers” trope can only stretch so far, and a sudden crisis of conscience doesn’t make the kinds of actions either of them commit forgivable, regardless of how sweet they are when they’re together. It bites itself directly in the ass with its own actions, and I feel uncomfortable with labeling this a rom-com when the term black comedy would’ve fit just as well. With plenty of other well-written, adorable rom-coms out in the universe — this year alone has produced a solid number of them — I can’t possibly let it slide. Maybe it’s the child of divorce in me, but when someone’s bite turns out to be truly as bad as their bark, what in the world is left to care about?
Rating:2/10
The Loverspremieres on Sundance Now and AMC+ on December 7 in the U.S. with new episodes premiering weekly.
