Dream Stream: Vigin River, The Durrells, and Normal People

Virgin River

Seasons 1-4 – Netflix

With the buzz in the air about the upcoming fifth season following the scandalous revelation at the end of series four, it's time to pay a revisit to our favourite Northern California town.

Virgin River is a romantic drama yarn based on the Virgin River novels by Robyn Carr. The first season premiered on Netflix back in 2019, and since then our screens have been graced with a further three.

With four seasons currently available to binge, and the much-anticpated fifth on the way this autumn, this show is a great one to get both your teeth and your tears into.

Virgin River follows Melinda ‘Mel’ Monroe (Alexandra Breckenridge), who answers an ad to work as a midwife and nurse practitioner in the remote Northern California town of Virgin River, thinking it will be the perfect place to start fresh and leave her painful memories behind. But she soon discovers that small-town living isn’t quite as simple as she expected. She must learn to heal herself before she can truly make Virgin River her home.

With a great performance from Breckenridge and fellow cast members including Martin Henderson, Colin Lawrence, Jenny Cooper, Lauren Hammersley, Annette O’Toole, Tim Matheson, Benjamin Hollingsworth, Grayson Gurnsey and Sarah Dugdale, Virgin River is definitely one for the romantics. If this is your bag, you’ll love it to the very end.

The Durrells

Series 1-4 – ITVX

Ah, the dream of emigration... It can certainly be quite an adventure...

The Durrells is a 26-episode comedy-drama series inspired by Gerald Durrell’s three autobiographical books about his family’s four years on the Greek Island of Corfu.

Written by Simon Nye, and directed by Steve Barron and Roger Goldby, the series began airing in 2016 and ended in 2019. A great hit for ITV, it is perfect for binge-viewing, and all four series are now streamable from ITVX.

The series begins in 1935, when Louisa Durrell (Keeley Hawes) suddenly announces that she and her four children will move from Bournemouth to the Greek island of Corfu. Her husband died some years earlier and the family is experiencing financial problems.

A battle ensues as the family adapts to life on the island which, despite a lack of electricity and modern sewage system, proves that Corfu is cheap and an earthly paradise.

With a fantastic performance from Hawes and a cast including Milo Parker, Josh O’Connor, Daisy Waterstone, Callum Woodhouse and Alexis Georgoulis, The Durrells is a delight which will transport you to a world you will love to escape to, even if just for a little while.

Normal People

Limited series – BBC iPlayer

Based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Sally Rooney, Normal People is an Irish drama series that was produced by Element Pictures for BBC Three.

The series follows the relationship between Marianne Sheridan (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell Waldron (Paul Mescal), as they navigate early adulthood.

Primarily written by Rooney and Alice Birch, the show was directed by Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie Macdonald, and was a 2020 treat of no mistaking.

Normal People follows Marianne and Connell through their time at secondary school in County Sligo on Ireland’s Atlantic coast, and then sees them as undergraduates at Trinity College Dublin.

The focus is mainly on Connell’s and Marianne’s complex relationship. Among her peers at secondary school, Marianne is regarded as an oddball, but she denies caring about her social standing.

Despite her academic achievements, her home life is complicated by her dismissive mother, Denise (Aislín McGuckin), and her resentful brother, Alan (Frank Blake). Her father is deceased and is later revealed to have been a domestic abuser, though her family avoids mentioning him.

Connell is an athletic, high-achieving student living with his single mother Lorraine (Sarah Greene), who is employed by Denise as a cleaner. He is popular in school, though he remains silent while Marianne is constantly bullied.

This creates complexity as their relationship develops further than they would have imagined.

With brilliant performances from young stars Edgar-Jones and Mescal, Normal People was a stand-out effort from 2020, and is available for a well-deserved re-run.

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