Mix Tape review – nails the heart-stopping excitement of new love

The Guardian

15-07-2025

A few questions before we begin. Did you come of age in or around 1989? Do you look back on your teenage years with fondness or horror? Did you have a great, formative love during the above? Did you let him/her go and never even do a cursory online search as to their whereabouts in the intervening decades?
Did I just startle you by referring to the intervening decades between 1989 and now? Because that's what there are. I know. I had to check, too.
How great is your tolerance for the depiction of young love on screen now that you are past youth yourself? Will you sit on the sofa wreathed in smiles and yearning or will you put a boot through the telly?
How well-disposed do you feel to the idea of a Sally Rooney-esque endeavour aged up to cover those who came of age in or around 1989 and how their lives have played out since? This is important. I'm talking contemplative scenes, wry smiles at memories, melancholic suffusion, mood above action.
Have you read and enjoyed the acclaimed novel Mix Tape by Jane Sanderson?
Your answers to the above will help determine how much you enjoy Mix Tape, an adaptation by Jo Spain of Sanderson's novel. The four-part, double-timelined drama tells the story of freelance music journalist Dan O'Toole (Jim Sturgess) and author Alison Connor (Teresa Palmer), who grew up as teenagers in Sheffield and were each other's first loves. Their younger selves are played (excellently) by newcomer Rory Walton-Smith and Florence Hunt respectively. Their scenes capture all the excitement and novelty, the heart-stopping importance of every minute spent together that teenagers in love conjure for themselves. Dan's mother (Helen Behan) has some misgivings – she would rather he were playing the field a bit – but his father (Mark O'Halloran) is a romantic and is happy just to give his boy a little life advice along the way, especially as Alison is almost as fond of his racing pigeons as he is.
Dan only wishes that Alison would let him meet her parents. Or even tell him where she lives and let him walk her home. Unfortunately, Alison's dad is long gone, her mother is an alcoholic and her boyfriend is a deeply unlovely piece of work called Martin (Jonathan Harden), whose malevolent presence suggests nothing but bad things are coming for the family. So it turns out, though the languorous pacing of Mix Tape, which is slightly too pleased with itself, means that it takes too long to get there.
Things are even slower in the present as we wait for Dan and Alison's paths to cross again. When Alison's new book is released, Dan sends her – hesitantly – a friend request online. She – hesitantly – accepts it. For a long time – a long time – they communicate by sending Spotify links to each other, of songs that accompanied pivotal moments in their lives and relationship. Dan is now married to Katja (Sara Soulié), one of those screen wives who exist merely to irritate. She insists that now (their only child has just departed for university) is the time for them to start travelling together, regardless of the fact that a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Dan to collaborate with a music legend on his memoir is on the horizon. Women, eh!
Alison is married to a successful surgeon (one day I want the story of an unsuccessful surgeon – one who's scraping by, his mortality rates just good enough to keep him in gainful employment but nothing to write home about) and trying to keep him from bouncing their daughter, Stella (Julia Savage), into a termination that she may not want. So neither adult life is perfect. Does this mean they should meet up and see what spark remains from 1989? Is the grass always greener on the path not taken? Why did they break up? Did he find out where she lived, and about her mum and Martin? Should they just hurry up and shag? Is your own life worthless because you do not have an intense, formative teenage romance to look back on that has shaped and haunted you in ways known and unknown ever since? The questions multiply.
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Mix Tape is full of impressive performances and hard work from everyone involved but it never quite catches fire. Or perhaps that's just because, when I remember the first boy who made me a mix tape, I want to vomit into the nearest bin. I wish you happier memories and greater enjoyment.
Mix Tape aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now