I also had to drive a -- - Oh yeah the bus!
- a little red... - No.
- I didn't drive a bus.
- Oh you were never behind the wheel of the...
- I was behind the wheel of the car but I had to -- it was a manual.
And I only drive
automatic and I had to drive it up the hill, and I burnt the clutch.
And you could smell it from really far away. - Oh no.
I was on about the, the theatre company.
- Oh, I never got to drive that bus. No.
-Oh, okay.
- I would have loved to.
What do you want to be when you’re 40?
- Am I allowed to say rich?
What about you?
- I want to do something that actually makes a difference.
- Change the world, you mean?
- Maybe just my own tiny corner of it.
So we meet Emma and Dexter on the night of their graduation,
which is the night they meet.
And it's 15th of July, 1988.
And we will visit them every single year for the next 20 years
on that exact same day.
And follow their lives and their ups and downs
and their relationship with each other and their relationships with other people.
And some have called it an emotional rollercoaster.
- Emma is a working class girl from Leeds.
Dex is an entitled English posho.
They appear to have nothing in common.
Most people do have a relationship like that
where they are sort of inexplicably drawn to someone
with whom they seem to have nothing in common.
But somehow that person sees them whole and they see
that person whole and there's no rational explanation for it.
But it's this kind of cosmic pull towards each other.
And I think that's what David's book evokes so, so beautifully.
And that's why people are so crazy about it.
And that's why I was really desperate to adapt it.
- It's one of the great cosmic mysteries.
How is that someone can go from being a total stranger
to being the most important person in your life.
- I think the the romantic side of it
is very unique,
very hopeful.
It gives it gives us an idea of
a kind of untraditional way of
falling in love, I think, because they they go through
so many different things before they eventually end up together.
- I can describe it with my hands.
I would say they go like that in a way.
And the series is as much interested in those two as individuals
and how they and just how their life
like individual lives evolve over time as it is
in their relationship.
- You have all these people telling you how great you are.
You know, smart, funny, talented.
- Oi! - I've been telling you for years,
so why don't you believe it?
- I think Emma's trajectory is really about
finding some confidence
and going after what she wants.
And Dex, Dex’s trajectory is, very complicated.
And it's more about losing something and perhaps
gaining something else, but losing something first.
- Are you still mates with Dexter? He's doing alright for himself.
- Pizza Express would have been fine.
- There are so many amazing set pieces in the book, so
I couldn't wait to write Tilly’s wedding.
I couldn't wait to write...
I mean, there was nothing that I.
There was nothing that I didn't want to write.
If I had my way,
I would have put everything in it because there's no boring bits in that book.
It was just about choosing what would serve the drama best.
And it was more about the heartbreak of sacrificing things that I wanted to put in.
- I loved Arthur’s Seat.
It was just very magical and unbelievable that we were there.
It was a gorgeous day, we were at the top of Arthur’s Seat,
looking out over Edinburgh, being the leads in a Netflix series.
Pretty pretty nice, Pretty cool, pretty cool.
The second day was less fun for me because I got food poisoning right
as we hit the top of that huge, huge hill and we had to just keep filming.
Didn’t matter what state I was in.
- It was far to fall after the first day.
- Yeah, yeah.
- After we met, I had a bit of a crush on you.
- So I happened to it?
This crush?
There's one location which is Rome, which doesn't have
as much significance because they're not together,
but Edinburgh obviously has a huge significance.
It's where they meet.
Greece is where they have their first...
They kind of just get away from reality and they just have a lovely,
lovely time together with no other people involved
and then Paris...
- Is where it all.. That's where it finally happens.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
So actually, England really screwed them up.
- Yeah, London was not the one for them.
- It goes all sorts of places.
It goes to Greece, it goes to Paris, it goes to Rome and London.
London in the nineties.
It really evokes London in the nineties
so well, Soho especially in that kind of --
that kind of scene where, you know, media types going through
Soho with edit bags on their shoulders
and stuff like that that’s a bit of a lost world now
even though it wasn't that long ago. So I really enjoyed
researching and writing London in the nineties.
- Back in the late eighties it was all I thought about.
- And now?
- I thought I'd finally got rid of you.
- I don’t think you can.
Well, we we never lived the eighties.
We sort of, barely lived the nineties.
Can’t remember loads from the noughties.
So it was really, you know -- but it has such, it does...
I think all those eras have some stamp
or another, in today's culture. - There was a lot to learn.
- Yeah, it was a lot to learn.
- We had to be taught how to use phones and desktop... - Like specifically hamburger phones.
- Yeah. Pay phones and like - You had to do a lot of typing.
- Typing and typewriters, because we just
didn't, we were like, "What do we do with this?"
And we had to be taught.
Usually by an older member of crew who begrudgingly give us instructions.
- Recreating the period the eighties, nineties and
noughties was something.
Obviously we spent a huge amount of time thinking about.
What we didn't want to do was throw in the obvious references, which are what
everyone's kind of shallow collective memory courtesy of Instagram
is going to think of when you think of 88, 89, 90 and we had this amazing
art director called Patrick Rolf, who was just so subtle in his choices.
And one of my favourite things about the series is the incredibly
and sort of low key but precisely accurate way
that Patrick, evoked the moment across the years.
So I think that works so well.
Dovetailed with Matt Biffa’s music and I should say, Matt Biffa and David
Nicholl’s music, because David was all over that soundtrack.
So yeah, it's a combination of -- and also the and also the,
the costumes and the hair.
It just all worked together to just subtly evoke the era rather than it
being a kind of, you know, nostalgia fest and in a more obvious way
- Just pick up the phone, Emma.
We’re Dex and Em!
Aren’t we?
[Producer] Do you have any favourite
on screen couples from other shows,
films that you would like to see over the decades?
- Oh it’s gotta be Connell Waldron and Marianne from Normal People,
I really want to see how that plays out.
- Mine would probably be
Nick and Jess from New Girl because I've never seen a couple
with more onscreen chemistry than those two.
- I’ve never seen New Girl.
- You've never seen New Girl?! - No.
- It is excellent. - I know you love New girl.
We’ve had this conversation before.
- It's such a masterful sitcom in so many ways.
I feel like, especially in this country, it's
sort of slept on a bit, but it's so excellent.
And Zooey Deschanel, and Jake Johnson have the most palpable chemistry
and I think one of the best on screen kisses I've ever seen in my life.
Schmidt!
Enough said.
And Winston, the whole gang.
-You love New Girl? - Yeah, I love it.
Imagine one selected day stuck out of your life
and think how different its course would have been.