There is a big problem with One Day and it’s hiding in plain sight

Every now and then you’re forced to make a lonely stand against the cultural consensus. In 1986 I told school friends that, no, I didn’t worship Simple Minds and so would not be accompanying them to Wembley Arena.

Nearly 30 years later, I risk becoming a social pariah because I’m the only woman in the playground who feels “meh” about One Day. More to the point, I’m underwhelmed by the drama’s heroine Emma Morley. Or, as I came to think of her: the dour-mat.

I didn’t find Emma objectionable when I lapped up David Nicholl’s excellent novel on a summer holiday in 2010 – but the delight of reading is you can create your own version of a character in your head. My Emma was sparky, witty and seductively intransigent, like Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing.

And when I watched Ambika Mod’s vivacious guest turn on The Graham Norton Show, she fully embodied those qualities. So, my hopes were sky-high when One Day finally landed on Netflix. This, after all, is a story about my generation: our hopes, dreams, politics, failings and our pop music.

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But when I started watching the adaptation, something weird had happened: the actor’s natural vivacity had been dialled down to dreary, with occasional flashes of a grin. Emma Jekyll had been replaced by a finger-wagging Ms Hyde who aimed to “reclaim the night” by frowning on bog-standard student hedonism.

You’re supposed to disapprove of feckless, gilded Dexter. Instead, I couldn’t imagine why such an amiable, free spirit would put up with endless carping from a student peer so lacking in joy and spontaneity she didn’t, in the end, want to jump his bones. 

Lest we forget, this young woman felt a recent graduate should have already formulated a life “plan”. And that travelling and teaching Tefl is somehow dissolute. I winced as Mod’s Emma says frostily, “That’s your plan for the future, to just go on holiday?” As if widening your horizons was a capitalist crime.

Moral Morley, of course, wants to “change things, do something that actually makes a difference”, so there’s no surprise when after several deadbeat jobs she becomes a teacher.

Setting other people right is what this Netflix Emma lives for. When young Dex flippantly says his aim, aged 40, is to be “rich and famous”, Emma retorts snidely she can see him with a tiny sports car and a wife “who’s thick as mince and you’ve got absolutely nothing to say to each other”.

We’re endlessly told Emma’s character is “funny”, but Emma’s constant snark at kind-hearted Dexter feels pure Mean Girls rather than the bolshy warm character from the book.

Later in the series, she’s so unpleasant to her broken-hearted ex-boyfriend Ian (treated as the human equivalent of winning a bottle of Blue Nun on the tombola) that I hoped he’d sew prawns into her curtains. 

The thing is, I should be a firm Emma ally. I may be a soppy southerner, but like Morley’s character, I read English literature, devoured novels and came from a modest background (my parents were tenant publicans).

I too was discombobulated by the rich kids at university, who had endless funds to take luxurious gap years. Even so, watching this version of Emma, I found myself siding with fun, frivolous, live-for-the-day Dexter.

What’s so awful about travel and copping off with strangers when you’re young and footloose? Who needs persuading to skinny-dip at night in Greece?

Why is Emma so uptight she won’t duet to a Waterboys’ track on karaoke? What sort of killjoy hears the trill of blackbirds at dawn and says it makes her feel anxious, “like I’ve done something I’ll regret”. How we wish she had! 

Even the episode where newly successful Dexter takes Emma to a hip basement restaurant based on Quaglino’s/The Atlantic (the “in” joints of the 1990s) and gets off his head on coke, flirting with the waitresses, didn’t soften my heart.

Yes, he was being a tw**, but if I’d abandoned every pal who was a club-loving, drug-taking bore in the 1990s, I’d have a far more impoverished circle of friendship today. 

I’ve seen mates through dark times, just as they’ve helped me through unruly days. And here’s the thing. The rave generation included doctors, nurses, (always the worst behaved), social workers, artists, charity campaigners, and – yes – political activists and teachers. Being leftie, feminist and pro-CND didn’t mean you had an instant joy lobotomy. 

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But the thing I find hardest is we’re given to believe that it’s Emma’s restraint and frequent moralising that Dexter finds so alluring.

The message is clear: she’s different, she’s serious, she’s decent and she can’t go through with a one-night stand. It’s troublingly close to the Madonna/whore playbook: you won’t respect your hook-ups, but you’ll pine all your life for the one who said no to sex. The one who plays with the children sweetly at a wedding.

OK, I get it. Emma is Dexter’s Jiminy Cricket conscience (although Jiminy is cheerful and has the best tunes) but in carrying the burden of goodness she forfeits the complexity that makes Dexter so devilishly compelling. And who wants to settle down with their conscience? 

So – fatally for this viewer – I didn’t believe that these two opposites would attract. Or, at least, not until episode 12, when Emma finally had found her mojo, written a book, moved to Paris, loosened up and gone glam; the point in the drama when Mod’s natural charisma and humour were finally unleashed. This Emma was sexy and vital – and the chemistry finally gelled. I just wish we’d seen more of her early on.