For your poster ‘Normal People’ It seems like the typical teenage melodrama that a “Carca” would call “Eures”. If you hurry, the typical teenage melodrama with an English accent, cut according to a certain pattern … or a passerby algorithm, that too. It seems and is largely so, although without ceasing to be what it is according to his nature, his calling and his own will, at the same time being a role model on both sides (small or large). Screen whose imposed or self-imposed labels need not be a prison for any story.

In your not-so-small Irish universe ‘Normal People’based on a novel by Sally Rooney – also the screenwriter of the series – which we know in Spain as ‘Normal People’ (…), she feels like every teenager should feel before reality starts to hit them: free, proud, determined and most of all alive. The “typical teenage melodrama” that blows up once is detached from the first and third words to focus on the second, melodrama. To strike decisively in this reality. So typical and youthful, so universal and timeless.

We all feel or regret our mistakes. We are all young or felt young. Free, proud, determined. Lively. In some ways, politics aside, we have all gone through or will go through something similar. Born, grow, die. Life becomes a boy, horse and fool (or king). It’s easy to be drawn to it ‘Normal People’, but not because their story can be ours. It is simply because it makes itself popular through the most convincing weapons that a melodrama can display: everydayness, closeness, modesty, honesty, decency.

You’re drawn to it because, unlike other melodramas that come out of The Islands, like “Poldark”, ‘Normal People’ It takes place in a world and plane of existence like ours. Real and within the reach of empathy and not just masochistic joy. In twelve episodes of around 25/30 minutes long, ideal for obsessively devouring like a bag of pipes. The “quintessential teenage melodrama” that challenges both followers and converts as it continually reframes its own emotional maelstrom with energy and determination.

Or when the student behaves like the teacher and automatically becomes the reference. ‘Normal People’ It follows a model that pushes it forward rather than restricts it, and sits somewhere in between, where immature bravado meets savvy poise. Where feelings are surrounded by a sensitivity that is difficult to resist. Complicated, for our own good. ‘Normal People’ It only takes one chapter to unfold and reveal itself as, as Lenny Nero said, “the slice of a man’s life.” ‘Strange Days’.

Or something that might resemble it. Something that can behave like this before our eyes and hearts. Above all and beyond imposed or self-imposed labels and vital connotations based on age, faith or ideology, ‘Normal People’ It is an exquisite and elegant, but at the same time humble and close story of love and heartbreak that can support us in its cause. A cause that can accompany us in our sleep for one or more summer nights. To turn this apathetic, fictional junkie into a flesh-and-blood human being who bleeds when stabbed.

By Juan Pairet Iglesias
@Wanchopex