If Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew hadn’t met and spoken to each other for the first time on July 15, 1988, they would have gone their separate ways after graduation and lived their whole lives not knowing each other. There also wouldn’t be a series adaptation of their fictional story coming to Netflix on Feb. 8.
“It’s one of the great cosmic mysteries,” Ambika Mod’s Emma says at the beginning of the trailer for “One Day,” adapted from David Nicholls’ bestselling novel. “How is it that someone can go from being a total stranger to being the most important person in your life?”
Set to The Cranberries’ “Dreams,” the trailer chronicles the interwoven lives of Mod’s Emma and “The White Lotus” actor Leo Woodall’s Dexter over 20 years and 14 episodes. If that sounds familiar, yes the story was previously adapted in a 2011 film starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess.
According to the show’s logline, “Each episode finds Dex and Em, one year older, on this one particular date, as they grow and change, move together and apart, experience joy and heartbreak.” The two oscillate between friends, lovers and everything in between.
“After we met, I had a bit of a crush on you,” Mod’s Emma confesses to Woodall’s Dexter later on in the clip.
“So what happened to it? This crush?” he counters as the trailer’s tone takes a turn.
“Back in the late 80s it was all I thought about,” Emma says.
“And now?” Dex asks.
“I thought if only I got rid of you,” Em tearfully says.
“I don’t think you can,” Dex says.
The pair navigate friendship while they date other partners only to come back to each other again and again.
“Imagine one selected day struck out of your life, and how different its course would have been,” Emma ruminates at the end of the clip.
Led by Nicole Taylor, writers include Anna Jordan, Vinay Patel and Bijan Sheibani.
From production company Drama Republic, producer Nige Watson and executive producers Roanna Benn, Jude Liknaitzky, David Nicholls and Nicole Taylor, “One Day arrives in its full batch of 30-minute episodes on Feb. 8.
