Sally Rooney

Lenny Abrahamson on how Normal People inadvertently became a year-defining show for 2020

Lenny Abrahamson on the set of Normal People (credit: Element Pictures/ Enda Bowe)

While we all tuned into Normal People to escape the news, executive producer and co-director Lenny Abrahamson tuned into the news to escape Normal People. Or, at least, he tried to.

"I remember thinking, ‘I'm just going to listen to something really depressing that has nothing to do with arts and culture," he says. "So I switched on Brexitcast, and the first few words were them talking about watching Normal People over the weekend. I just thought, ‘Oh, Jesus!’”

"I didn’t think we’d have a mass audience at all, none of us did." 

The complex genesis of Conversations with Friends

Normal People was the TV hit of the first Covid lockdown, a comfort blanket of a series that offered respite from what was a new and terrifying virus.

Viewers tuned into Marianne and Connell’s love story, adapted from Sally Rooney’s second book, in huge numbers. It became BBC Three’s ­biggest-ever series and the iPlayer’s most popular show of 2020, racking up more than 60 million streams in just eight months. Worldwide, it won countless awards.

Normal People's Daisy Edgar-Jones talks awkward auditions, literary adaptations and Where The Crawdads Sing

Credit: BBC

With the world stuck indoors, the adaptation of Sally Rooney's best-selling novel was the perfect recipe for a lockdown sensation. It captured the hearts of viewers, before breaking them and putting them back together again. 

Before its television debut, Normal People already had a loyal legion of literary fans, including star Daisy Edgar-Jones. 

BBC Three announces premiere date for Normal People with new trailer

(credit: BBC)

All 12 episodes of the upcoming drama will be available to watch on BBC Three from Sunday 26th April.

Daisy Edgar-Jones (War Of The Worlds) and newcomer Paul Mescal star as Marianne and Connell, two young lovers who have a complicated on-off relationship spanning across their teenage years in a small town west of Ireland through their student years at Trinity College, Dublin.

BBC commissions adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends

Sally Rooney (Credit BBC)

The new series follows the adaptation of her second novel, Normal People, which airs this spring.

The series will be produced by Element Pictures, directed by Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie McDonald, with several episodes written by Alice Birch.

Conversations With Friends follows two college students who make an unexpected and life changing connection with a married couple.

Filming starts on Sally Rooney’s Normal People

Sally Rooney (Credit BBC)

Oscar-nominated Lenny Abrahamson (Room, Frank) and Bafta-winner Hettie MacDonald (Howard’s End) are on board to direct the 12-part BBC Three drama, with filming due to take place in Dublin, Sligo and Italy.

The modern love story has been adapted for the screen by Sally Rooney, alongside writers Alice Birch and Mark O’Rowe.

Normal People follows the tender but complex relationship of popular and easy-going Connell and lonely and intimidating Marianne.