As the world hunkered down at the start of COVID, escapism was what we all desperately needed.
Bombarded in the Spring of 2019 by grim statistics about a rising Coronavirus death toll and press conferences from world leaders, box sets were devoured as people retreated to their homes.
Lockdown provided an opportunity to catch up on great television series and even greater movies missed during the normal hustle and bustle of life.
With cinemas shut, the digital release patterns of movies of varying quality also accelerated as studios and indie producers worked out how and when to screen their work.
However audiences also craved fresh stories with fresh talent about the world.
Careers were turbo charged as audiences fell in love with the dynamic young casts of innovative, well made shows like 'I Will Destroy You,' 'It's A Sin' and 'Normal People'.
Of those shows, Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie McDonald's 12 episode adaptation of Sally Rooney's 'Normal People' was the perfect lockdown viewing.
A sexually explicit tale of first love, audiences quickly became wrapped up in the ups and downs in the lives of Sligo teenagers, Daisy Edgar Jones' Marianne and Paul Mescal's Connell.
They swooned over its stars, their neck chains and their rocket lollies and they empathised with the characters' mental health struggles.
The fact that the story was broken down into digestible half hour chunks made it user friendly and it seemed all the more potent.
Now Abrahamson and Sally Rooney have teamed up again, with Leanne Welham joining the Dubliner on directorial duties for an adaptation of the writer's first novel 'Conversations With Friends'.
There's a different team of writers on board this time, including Abrahamson's long time collaborator Mark O'Halloran, British playwright Alice Birch, her fellow 'Succession' screenwriter Susan He Stanton and Meadbdh McHugh.
With Abrahamson still steering the ship, the question many have been asking is: can 'Conversations With Friends' match the phenomenal success of 'Normal People' which enjoyed acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic on BBC3, RTE and Hulu?
In this adaptation, Cork actress Alison Oliver takes on the role of Frances Flynn in her debut screen role.
Frances is a quiet Trinity College Dublin literature student with a flair for writing but has little confidence.
Along with her outgoing American-born secondary school chum and former lover, Sasha Lane's Bobbi Connolly, she performs her own poetry.
Her poems take an acerbic look at society.
One night, Jemima Kirke's writer Melissa Baines drops into a performance and raves about their work.
Taking Frances and Bobbi under her wing, she invites the Trinity students to her house in leafy south Dublin for dinner which is cooked by Melissa's actor husband, Joe Alwyn's Nick Conway.
Bobbi finds Nick very dull but during conversation, this sensitive soul strikes a chord with Frances.
When they are invited to a birthday party at the couple's house, Bobbi flirts with Melissa in the garden while Nick hides away upstairs - kissing Frances when she eventually discovers him.
It isn't long before they embark on a clandestine affair, with Frances visiting him while Melissa is away on business.
When the writer invites Frances and Bobbi to join them and some friends on holiday to Croatia, the dynamics are awkward but she and Nick continue their affair.
However eventually the truth spills out.
As with 'Normal People,' Abrahamson and Welman give the audience a peek into Frances' home life and it is (rather unsurprisingly) troubled.
Her mum, Justine Mitchell's Paula Flynn lives alone and while she gets on okay with her daughter, Frances has a tendency to withhold important information from her about her life - even when her health is at stake.
But that is nothing compared to the complexity of her relationship with her dad.
Tommy Tiernan's Dennis is an alcoholic who lives amid the detritus of his drinking and fast food cartons in a shabby bungalow.
Slumped on a sofa watching TV, he struggles to make conversation as he battles depression.
All of this should make you feel really invested in Rooney's characters.
But unlike 'Normal People,' 'Conversations with Friends' feels like a bit of a chore.
And a lot of that is down to the fact that the main characters are just really irritating.
Frances mopes around, apologising a lot of the time and allowing Bobbi to browbeat her emotionally.
Bobbi spends her time making provocative pronouncements about the world and those around her as if she is the fountain of all knowledge.
She also seems to derive a perverse pleasure in getting Frances to constantly apologise to her.
As a love interest, Nick has all the charisma of a damp sock.
He and Melissa - and their mates for that matter - are the kind of couples you see in coffee shops with their Urban Outfitters purchases and hipster vibes, engaging in a boring battle of wits to see who can be the most pretentious.
That's not to say everything is bad in 'Conversations With Friends'.
In the scenes back in Co Mayo, Justine Mitchell and Tommy Tiernan are very good - offering welcome respite from the overbearing smugness of many of the Dublin based characters.
The latter is particularly good as a middle aged man consumed by alcoholism and severe mental health problems.
Alex Murphy from 'The Young Offenders' also pops up as a student friend, Philip and tries to make the most of a part that never really goes anywhere.
Kerry Fox has a notable cameo as Melissa's very protective literary agent, Valerie Taylor-Gates.
However oddly for a show in half hour bites, Abrahamson and Welman's 12 part drama plods along like an asthmatic ant.
And you can't help feeling that the reason the show doesn't connect in the way that 'Normal People' did is that its characters are just too introspective and annoying.
The fact that it is fashioned around Nick and Frances' affair will also be problematic for some viewers.
Audiences found it easier to accept an intense Connell and Marianne relationship in 'Normal People' because it was young love and first love.
While it was far from perfect, you also felt tremendous sympathy for them.
It's harder to sympathise with Nick and Frances - given the emotional damage they are inflicting on themselves and those around them.
But it also doesn't help that neither of them seem to know what they want from the relationship.
Given her relationship with her dad, there's something interesting about Frances' attraction to a man who admits to having had his own mental health struggles but this isn't fully explored.
It is merely alluded to.
And while Dublin (and the Belfast locations masquerading as the Irish capital) is shown in all its glory by cinematographers Susie Lavelle and Bobby Shore, the series seems a little too self-satisfied about life in a bustling cosmopolitan capital.
It just seems too in love with its self-absorbed characters and their bourgeois concerns.
Oliver does her best with a frustrating lead role and Kirke likewise as Melissa.
However it is hard to understand what Frances sees in Lane's Bobbi or Alwyn's Nick - the latter spends so much time deliberately pronouncing his Brian O'Driscoll style South Dublin accent it just bleeds away any emotion.
Bobbi sounds like a wasp in a helmet - always making noise and bugging the hell out of you.
In hindsight, it was probably too much to expect that even with a talented director like Abrahamson onboard, 'Conversation with Friends' could emulate the staggering achievements of 'Normal People'.
Maybe two years on from the start of the pandemic, we have just moved on from material like this?
Maybe we have become tired of introspection - certainly introspection delivered as tiresomely as this?
Or maybe we are now more alive to Sally Rooney's schtick and are less tolerant of it?
If her third novel 'Beautiful World, Where Are You?' does make it onto the big or small screen, it will need to be much livelier.
Navel gazing and the constant pinging of smartphones and smartpads does not a great TV series make.
It's time to move on from the always questionable Joy of Text.
('Conversation with Friends' was broadcast on BBC3 from May 15-June 7, 2022 and was made available on Hulu in the United States on May 15, 2022)
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