Mix Tape review – it's easy to fall for this sweet and intense romance

The Guardian

a day ago

The question 'will they or won't they?' permeates many romantic stories, and it is almost always answered with 'they do eventually'. In the four-part Irish-Australian drama Mix Tape, that evergreen question is still there, more or less, but it has been deepened and expanded in interesting ways. It's not really about whether Alison and Dan will get together because we know they already did – one of the show's two distinctly different timelines follows them as lovestruck teenagers in the 1980s.
But the other timeline, set in the present day, reveals Alison and Dan went their separate ways and haven't seen each other for many years. There's the possibility they might get back together, despite each being married with children to other people. But for me, it was more interesting to contemplate whether either of them could finally find healing and closure for their deeply unresolved feelings. The past is a lonely place, as they say, and it has left big sandbags weighing down their minds.
Which all sounds rather heavy. But this series – directed by Lucy Gaffy and written by Joe Spain, adapting Jane Sanderson's novel of the same name – is staged with lightness of touch and is a real pleasure to watch. At its core are four beautifully judged performances: from Teresa Palmer and Jim Sturgess as adult Alison and Dan in the present day, and Florence Hunt and Rory Walton-Smith as their younger selves. The latter convey giddy, intoxicating young love while the former are more plaintive and yearning.
As adults, Dan is a Sheffield-based music journalist while Alison is a bestselling novelist living in Australia. When a radio interviewer inquires about her upbringing in Sheffield, she gently infers she'd rather talk about something else. The script is full of small but salient moments like these, fleshing out the characters' lives and emotions without dumbing things down or applying highlighter pen.
We're introduced to the leads at a house party in Sheffield in 1989, when young Dan spots Alison from across the room. They get to know each other partly by swapping mix tapes, which of course enables plenty of needle drops (think Joy Division, the Cure, New Order). I initially feared a cheesy 'soundtrack of love' element, but Gaffy strikes a good balance: sweet but never cloying. The characters' intense connection is tempered by the knowledge they'll ultimately split, the circumstances gradually revealed.
When Dan sends Alison a friend request years later, we can tell by the look on her face that it's welcomed. Visually conveying this kind of emotional information isn't easy, though it helps to have complex and enigmatic eyes like Teresa Palmer, who is very good at saying a lot with a little. She often plays roles that require her to balance relatability with concealed depths, such as the recent miniseries The Last Anniversary, Disney+'s cult-themed drama The Clearing and Cate Shortland's kidnap movie Berlin Syndrome. Sturgess is excellent too as Dan, a man who seems to be constantly running things over in his mind, haunted by gaps in his life that might never be filled.
The terms 'flashback' and 'flashforward' feel too sharp and simple for Mix Tape. The jumps back and forward in time are more like joins, feeling fluid and instinctual; props to editors Katrina Barker and Christine Cheung. The trick – also demonstrated recently in Justin Kurzel's psychologically complex series The Narrow Road to the Deep North – is to make each timeline feel both independent and interconnected: satisfying on their own terms, but also inseparable.
I was moved by both story strands in Mix Tape, which really do feel like two sides of the same coin. At four episodes of roughly one hour apiece, the runtime felt just right: more than enough to truly get to know these people. I left wishing the best for them.
Mix Tape is on Binge in Australia now, with a UK release yet to be announced.