Hulu’s Overlooked 1-Season Romance Is the Perfect Weekend Binge
Amanda M. Castro is a Network TV writer at Collider and a New York–based journalist whose work has appeared in Newsweek, where she is an Associate Editor, and The U.S. Sun, where she previously served as a Senior Consumer Reporter.
She specializes in network television coverage, delivering sharp, thoughtful analysis of long-running procedural hits and ambitious new dramas across broadcast TV. At Collider, Amanda explores character arcs, storytelling trends, and the cultural impact of network series that keep audiences tuning in week after week.
Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Amanda is bilingual and holds a degree in Communication, Film, and Media Studies from the University of New Haven.
While Normal People's success may suggest that Sally Rooney can make romance distressing, Conversations with Friends offers a less satisfying take. Based on her first novel, the series shows a complicated situation between two former girlfriends, a married couple several years older than them, and all the pain that comes with it. Neither character is confident in their ability to handle relationships, which creates a tense but gripping atmosphere.
The drama starring Alison Oliver, Sasha Lane, Joe Alwyn, and Jemima Kirke spans 12 episodes and follows Frances Flynn, a student who becomes increasingly puzzled by her feelings for Nick Conway, an actor married to the book's writer. Although the film's romantic storyline isn't as brilliant or as striking as Normal People's, it shows there is more to the affair than meets the eye.
Conversations with Friends first became available on Hulu in May 2022, but it's no longer available on the site in the U.S. However, you can purchase all 12 episodes through Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV, though not all regions may have access.
What Is 'Conversations With Friends' About?
Frances and Bobbi are university students who perform spoken-word poetry together. They’re also ex-girlfriends, though their relationship has left them with a closeness that doesn’t fit neatly into either friendship or romance. When they meet Melissa Baines, an established writer played by Kirke, she takes an interest in their work and invites them into her social circle, and that’s how they meet her husband, Nick (Alwyn), an actor whose reserved nature draws Frances in.
The affair that follows complicates all four lives. Frances becomes increasingly invested in Nick, while Bobbi develops her own connection with Melissa. What begins as an unconventional friendship gradually turns into a mess of competing loyalties, jealousy, and assumptions nobody seems willing to challenge. Frances, in particular, struggles to reconcile what she wants with what she’s prepared to admit, even to herself.
Over its 12 episodes, the series isn't a conventional romantic story. Frances is uncertain and young, while Nick is married, leaving both ill-equipped to handle the implications of their decisions. The relationship develops through uncomfortable meetings and long silences rather than big statements, leaving viewers to decipher the characters' thoughts from the minimal information they are given.
Sally Rooney’s Debut Novel Is More Than a Complicated Love Story
In 2017, Faber and Faber published Conversations with Friends, introducing Rooney’s signature writing style and earning her later acclaim. Although her characters are smart, politically minded, and adept at dissecting society, they rarely reveal their pasts or their feelings in relationships.
Frances is the novel’s narrator, allowing readers to learn more about her feelings and thoughts than she shares with her peers. Her correspondence with Nick is telling because writing lets them both be funny and honest in a way that is impossible face-to-face. This shows that even people who don't feel comfortable with one another, or who don't make a great couple, can build a strong relationship and develop deep feelings for each other.
The television adaptation struggles to convey that interior life. A character staring at a phone doesn’t automatically make for compelling television, but the series occasionally makes digital communication feel intimate. Messages linger on screen, and the gap between what Frances writes and what she says aloud becomes part of the drama. It’s one of the more effective ways the show captures Rooney’s interest in the distance between private feelings and public behavior.
Naturally, comparisons with Normal People are likely. Both adaptations share director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Alice Birch, and both favor naturalistic performances, close-ups, and relaxed pacing. But while Normal People finds a compelling rhythm in Marianne and Connell's relationship, Conversations with Friends sometimes confuses emotional distance with emotional depth.
Frances and Nick's affair should feel overwhelming, but whenever they're together, their awkwardness makes it hard to see what attracts them to one another. The book gives that attraction time to develop through intelligent, well-crafted emails. The series gives less time to build a believable connection, so it transitions quickly into physical intimacy. The result is a romance that can feel oddly suspended, even as the characters reach the height of their physical intimacy.
This One-Season Romance Is Worth the Patience
Conversations with Friends asks viewers to spend 12 episodes with people who repeatedly make their own lives harder. Frances avoids difficult conversations, Nick struggles to express himself, and Bobbi’s confidence doesn’t always translate into emotional clarity. Nobody gets to be the uncomplicated romantic lead, and the show rarely rushes to explain who’s right or wrong.
The series can feel slow, and its central romance doesn’t always have the chemistry needed to sustain it. But its best moments come when the characters’ carefully maintained composure finally cracks. The animosity between Frances and Bobbi adds an emotional layer that goes beyond the affair, forcing Frances to confront the person she's been ignoring while pursuing others.
The title of the story is almost a parody: those characters communicate a lot with each other, but they rarely convey their ideas. Still, that contradiction is the point: these characters don't wait for someone to solve their mysteries; they simply don't understand themselves well enough, even if they seem eloquent. Although the adaptation doesn't always convey the novel's psychological finesse, it still captures enough of that uncomfortable intimacy for viewers to enjoy it.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.