One Day hangover

Does it have to end that way?

*WARNING*: SPOILERS AHEAD ABOUT THE TV ADAPTATION OF ONE DAY

(Though I think we’re beyond the statute of limitations for a book released in 2009)

Did you have a One Day hangover the day after you finished the series? I went to work the next morning with a headache and puffy eyes from crying. Having read the book 20 years ago, you’d think I might have come to terms with Emma Morley’s death by now but goddamit, I haven’t.

During the Paris episode, I started feeling a creeping sense of dread about what was to come. My husband, who hasn’t read the book, was in blissful ignorance next to me (though as Emma pulled on her hood and got onto her bike in the next episode, he asked, ‘Nothing’s going to happen is it?’ and I had to hide behind a pillow).

Then it did happen and we were both a mess. Through heaving sobs, I read to him this section from the book just after the accident, the last bit of which has always stayed with me:

“She thinks very distinctly of two things.

The first is a photograph of herself at nine years old in a red swimsuit on the beach, she can’t remember where, Filey or Scarborough perhaps. She is with her mother and father who are swinging her towards the camera, their sunburnt faces buckled with laughter. Then she thinks of Dexter, sheltering from the rain on the steps of the new house, looking at his watch, impatient; he’ll wonder where I am, she thinks. He’ll worry.

Then Emma Mayhew dies, and everything that she thought or felt vanishes and is gone forever.”

Devastating.

The next day I read a tweet from the writer Sophia Money-Counts that was extremely relatable:

‘Think I might stop watching One Day at the end of the Paris episode. That’s a good place to leave it I reckon. They live happily in that apartment forever the end.’

My husband and I keep revisiting our conversation about the ending. He doesn’t think Emma needs to die. He said they should have babies and keep being alive and it still would have been a good story.

We’ve all been there. The 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I haven’t accepted it but I can finally acknowledge that it makes for a powerful ending. Would it have been such an enduring story without it?

On a more general note, I think it took until episode 8 for this series to really get going. It clicked for me at Tilly’s wedding when Dexter and Emma were in the maze. I do think it helped that I’d recently re-read the book and had all of that rich detail fresh in my mind as I watched. No TV adaptation can very replicate the insight and texture of a 400 word novel.

People have complained that the pair don’t have good chemistry but I disagree. I thought Ambika Mod was perfectly prickly and funny as Emma and Leo Woodall does a convincing job of evolving from selfish cad to sweet and humbled adult. And as the series progressed, I really believed in their friendship and romance.

What did you think of it? Could the ending have been different?

See you next time.

Hannah