✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
TV

Normal People, BBC episode 3 & 4 review ★★★★★

04 May 20 – 04 May 21, ON BBC ONE AND IPLAYER

Marianne and Connell navigate the end of school and the start of college in two searing, stunning episodes crystallising the devastation of youthful mistakes

By Ella Kemp on 4/5/2020

1 CW reader is interested
Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal in Normal People
Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal in Normal People
Normal People, BBC episode 3 & 4 review 5 Normal People, BBC episode 3 & 4 review Ella Kemp
The story of Marianne and Connell is more than just a teen fling, but their adolescence is pivotal to understand the seismic impact they have on one another. In the third and fourth episodes of Normal People, we come to a crossroads: school ends, college begins, promises are broken, new bonds are made.


The “debs” is the end of year dance in Sligo – girls curl their hair extra tight and boys fill their wine glasses up to the brim. Sally Rooney’s writing makes this event feel cataclysmically important, rather than a throwaway indicator of time pushing forward. Because, you see: Connell won’t ask Marianne to go with him.


Their relationship, although it is blossoming, as they whisper about sex and violence in bed with each other, is still secret. “Why shouldn’t I tell anyone?” Connell’s mother Lorraine asks him, disgusted by her son’s cowardice. And it’s not just her – Connell’s decision pushes Marianne away, as Daisy Edgar-Jones shifts her eyes from luminous and in love to freezing cold with disappointment, her presence from all-consuming to invisible.


Connell's mother Lorraine (Sarah Greene) comforts Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones)

It’s in episode three that Connell’s heart first cracks open in a stunning performance of grief and regret from Paul Mescal, unhappy at the debs in a crowded room where he feels entirely alone without Marianne. She too is isolated – and so it is here that the hierarchy between the pair begins to shift.


Is he a little drunk when he phones her outside the dance, and for the second time in the episode, tells her he loves her, but this time makes it count with a “really”? It doesn’t matter. Because now, he too is overflowing with feeling that she will no longer carry. At the end of this chapter, after school, the tables are turning.


Fast forward a few months and Connell is at Trinity College Dublin – because Marianne had told him to join her there – and the precociously confident, popular nice guy is now out of his depth. In an English seminar, the camera wanders to anything shiny it can find – his chain, which curiously grows in significance as the series develops – because Connell’s glittering personality is nowhere to be found amidst this novel discomfort.



Connell (Paul Mescal) realises his mistakes at the Debs


Lenny Abrahamson directs Connell’s first moments at college with claustrophobia, but never any ridicule. Even during a rare weekend home, showing Connell’s job in a petrol station and his catch-up with Rob, a school friend he so often resented, the director pinpoints the young man’s growing pains. “Just don’t waste it,” Rob says of college, which will earn so much weight later. “Have a good time.” But without Marianne, Connell has so much less than he realised.


And so everything falls into place with uncanny ease when they do meet again. A seminar on Jane Austen; an overconfident fellow student; a house party invitation; an introduction to the overconfident guy’s girlfriend. When Connell and Marianne reconnect, in the loud top room of a three-story party, background noise slowly fades as they tune back into each other’s frequencies once again.


"What happens when the passage of time appears?” Fionn Regan sings on ‘Dogwood Blossom’ while the pair talk, later mentioning “loneliness [that] keeps you constantly awake”. While we enjoy the melodies, Connell and Marianne certainly hear the words.



Marianne with her boyfriend Gareth, who meets Connell in a seminar

At Trinity, a relay of undeserving boys form a satellite around Marianne, as supportive friends are also introduced. “Who wants a normal life?” Joanna asks Marianne, anchoring her wisdom early on. There is a nameless, relentless male friend who slowly creeps in – a character those familiar with the book will scratch their heads over initially, but who soon becomes intolerable.


As the world begins to take shape, in new houses, shared rooms (here we meet Connell's housemate Niall, one of this story’s most gracious and loveable characters), relationships are tentatively rekindled.


These two episodes frame a crossroads, a fissure in the first chapter, a crystallisation of why the decisions we make, the trust we neglect and the calls we ignore come to matter far beyond our youthful days, simultaneously careless and paranoid. Abrahamson, Rooney, Mescal and Edgar-Jones bottle this paradox, and set it free beautifully, slowly.


Back in the present, late one night he receives a text from her. The phone only vibrates, and it’s opened in silence. As ever, nobody knows which feelings Marianne and Connell will ever dare to speak into the world, which ones will forever exist without a sound.




What Normal People, BBC episode 3 & 4 review
When 04 May 20 – 04 May 21, ON BBC ONE AND IPLAYER
Price £ determined by cinemas
Website Click here for more information



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 8–10 December
Things to do in London this weekend: 8–10 December
Thoughtful Gifts under £100
Thoughtful gifts under £100
Rose Leslie and Suranne Jones in Vigil series 2, BBC One (Photo: BBC)
What to watch on TV this week

Editor's Picks

Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel in Gilmore Girls, Netflix
Great comedies to stream during lockdown
Best film streaming services, compared
Best film-streaming services, compared
Online theatre: streaming options for staying in. Picture: David Morrissey and Ben Whishaw in the Bridge Theatre's 2018 production of Julius Ceasar
Online theatre: streaming options for staying in
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
1

2020

TV

Normal People

BBC

You might like

  • Feel Good, Channel 4 review

    Feel Good, Channel 4 review ★★★★★

  • Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal in Normal People

    Normal People, BBC episode 1 & 2 review ★★★★★

  • Gillian Anderson in Sex Education season 2, Netflix

    Sex Education season 2, Netflix review ★★★★★



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×