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The Guardian
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Mix Tape review – nails the heart-stopping excitement of new love
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. Sign up to What's On Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday after newsletter promotion 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
Irish Times
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Mix Tape review: Unspools like a glorified cover version of Sally Rooney's Normal People
Mix Tape ( BBC Two , 9pm) is a bit of a muddle. This underwhelming four-part romcom, adapted from a 2020 novel by Yorkshire author Jane Sanderson, debuted last month on Australian streaming service Binge. The show's writer, meanwhile, is Jo Spain , a former Sinn Féin political adviser and An Phoblacht journalist, and it was filmed in Dublin , often against very conspicuous local landmarks – despite being set in Sheffield. On one point, at least, the series is very clear: the late 1980s were the best time ever for music (it is set 10 years later than the novel, which celebrated the 1970s punk scene). It makes its feelings known by opening in 1989 to the riff from The Stone Roses Fool's Gold (which just about came out in 1989, being released that November). We're in the bedroom of music nerd Daniel (Rory Walton-Smith) – a young man with the world at his feet and a place in his heart for shy crush Alison (Florence Hunt), who he woos by creating mixtapes of his favourite tunes (The Cure, Nick Drake etc). These star-crossed teens are destined to be together. At least they are until dark secrets in Alison's life derail their romance. Fast forward to the present day, and Daniel is a middle-aged freelance journalist – portrayed as a tragic sad sack by Jim Sturgess (full marks for accuracy). Middle-aged Alison (Teresa Palmer), meanwhile, has fled both Sheffield and her Yorkshire accent and reinvented herself as a hot-property debut novelist in Australia. Inevitably, news of her literary breakthrough reaches Daniel, who immediately takes to mooching about like Robert Smith in the Just Like Heaven video. None of this is within yelling distance of plausible. If he was that hung up on Alison, Daniel would have stalked her on social media long before the excuse of her being a newly-published author. As is the tradition with romcoms, Mix Tape also insists we regard as adorable conduct what in the real world would be unhinged if not sociopathic – ie, Daniel and Alison jeopardising their marriages to moon after one another after decades of getting on with their lives. READ MORE Then there is the distracting Dublin-ness of the whole thing. An international audience might not blink as Daniel and his father are filmed on a barge at Grand Canal Dock, with Bolands Mill and those space-age new apartments over their shoulder. However, it's going to take an Irish audience out of the drama pretty quickly. As will a scene supposedly filmed at Sheffield United's 30,000-capacity Bramall Lane but which bears a much closer resemblance to a generic League of Ireland stadium. Nobody sits down to a romantic comedy expecting oodles of originality. Which is just as well because Mix Tape unspools like a glorified cover version of Sally Rooney's elevated romcom, Normal People – spritzed up with the weaponised schmaltz of Richard Curtis circa Notting Hill or Love Actually. It also cheats by casting leads much younger than their characters. As the story opens in 1989, Daniel and Alison are about 16 or 17. But Palmer was born in 1986: she would have been three-years-old when Alison's romance with Jim blossoms. Similarly, Sturgess was born in 1978, which makes him 11 when Fool's Gold came out. Why not feature age-appropriate actors? The answer is they would simply look far too old and beaten down by life for the story to have any lustre. There is also the fact that few in their 50s or beyond would risk everything for a teenage crush – a grim fantasy Mix Tape never sells. You've heard this tune before and done much better. Mix Tape airs on BBC2 on Tuesday at 10pm
BBC News
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Photograph in charity shop book sparks search for its owners
When Emily Morse from Devon found a photo featuring a mystery family while flicking through a second-hand book from a charity shop, she knew what she had to do. Launching a mission to reunite the sweet seaside portrait of a mother, father and baby to its rightful owners, the Plymouth student turned to social media for help. Ms Morse posted the picture on Facebook and waited for the social media network to work its magic. Nicola Hellem, who was traced a while later and reunited with the snap showing the family during a trip to Cornwall, said it took a "nice person" to instigate such a search. Ms Morse, who discovered the picture while reading Mix Tape by Jane Sanderson, said: "I got the book about three years ago from a charity shop, it had just sat on my book shelf until then."Soon enough, after she posted the photograph, a message came through from Plympton's Nicola Hellem - whose daughter Eve had since grown from the baby in the photograph into a five-year-old girl. She said: "I think it was through the second comment that I found Nicola - it was very fast. "I messaged her on Facebook and dropped it down one night after work." Ms Morse, who said she was studying a degree in speech and language therapy at Plymouth Marjon University, told John Acres at Breakfast on BBC Radio Devon she was even able to meet Ms Hellem's daughter - the star of the Hellem said one of her work colleagues alerted her to the social media said she was happy to see the photograph - which also features her husband James Hellem, adding: "I didn't even realise it was missing."When I had a tag asking if it was me, it was so lovely - it was the first picture of our family in Cornwall with our daughter who was eight months at the time." Mrs Hellem, who works at St Budeaux Primary Academy in Plymouth, added: "I must have sent it off in one of my books I gave to charity when we were moving."The family had moved from Abingdon in Oxfordshire to Plymouth just before the second Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, she said. Revealing the photograph was taken in Looe, and thanking Ms Morse, she added: "It takes a nice person to find it and want to do that."
