Normal People on Stan
This series has really stayed with me ever since I watched it.
It is a deeply romantic story, but also profoundly sad. The relationship between Marianne and Connell is so emotionally engaging that at times it feels as though you are experiencing everything alongside them. Their highs and lows feel intensely real, and that emotional honesty is what makes the series so powerful.
I was completely drawn into Normal People and binge-watched the entire series twice in one week. Few shows have affected me as strongly as this one.
Stephen Rennicks’ original score also deserves a special mention. The music gives each scene room to breathe and allows the conversations and emotions to fully sink in.
Listen to the Normal People original score by Stephen Rennicks
Normal People
This beautifully edited video captures the emotional impact the series can have on its audience. The creator puts into words something that felt very true to my own experience of watching it:
“Some feelings will always be a part of who you are – and the people who understand these feelings? They will always be a part of you too.”
I have since read Sally Rooney’s 2018 novel, which is outstanding in its own right and richly deserving of all the praise it has received. The writing is perceptive, intimate and emotionally precise.
While the book closely follows the same story, the television adaptation had an even stronger impact on me personally. Perhaps I connect more deeply with visual storytelling, performances and music, but that takes nothing away from the quality of the novel itself.
Further praise for Normal People
“It’ll leave you touched, uplifted, nostalgic and bereft. Plus, no one else does dialogue this well observed.”
— Stylist
“Rooney’s second book is a wonder … The tender intricacies will break your heart and leave you desperate not to turn the final page. A book to cancel plans for.”
— Grazia
“A tender and prescient love story … It’s about the intensity of early love, the kind that stays with you the rest of your life.”
— Elle Book Club
“Rooney’s second novel is even more distinctive and perspicacious than her first … It’s an eerily engrossing love story that should come with a health warning on account of the profound desolation that descends upon finishing.”
— Mail on Sunday
“Beautifully observed and profoundly moving, I could scale new heights of hyperbole trying to describe how good this book is, but really you just need to read it.”
— Editor’s Choice, Bookseller
“I finished the book determined to look at the world differently. I’m not sure what higher compliment you can pay a novel.”
— The Times