One Day, Netflix, review: a bingeable romance with all the depth of a ...

The series stars Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall, and they get it spot on. As with the book, you have to suspend your disbelief that handsome, charming, public school Dexter falls for awkward, cerebral, ordinary Emma, who is described in the novel as having greasy skin and a fat face. But that is one secret to the novel’s success: it’s a Cinderella story in which she eventually bags her prince – in fact, she rescues him. Fifteen-year-old girls will adore it.

Mod is of Indian heritage therefore her character is too, but this is only referenced in passing and has no bearing on the story. The actress, so good in This Is Going to Hurt, gets everything right except the generic Northern accent, which she appears to have based on Mrs Hall from All Creatures Great and Small with a dash of Cold Feet’s Fay Ripley.

Woodall, last seen playing a garrulous Essex boy in The White Lotus, makes Dexter vulnerable and likeable, even during the period when he’s presenter of a TV show called Largin’ It (think Johnny Vaughan-meets-Tim Lovejoy). When Dexter and Emma are together, they’re very watchable. Separately, though, there is an imbalance because all of Dexter’s scenes are so much more lively to watch than Emma’s drab existence.

The soundtrack is a nostalgic treat. The timeframe covers the Nineties and Noughties, and there are nice era-specific touches: men wearing Davidoff Cool Water, ladettes on late-night TV, Kettle Chips as a new and sophisticated snack. If you’re the sentimental type, you’ll watch One Day and ponder the gap between how you thought your life would turn out when you were young, and how it actually did. The rest of us can just enjoy being taken back to a time when arranging a date involved writing a letter, visiting a public call box or – for the real early adopters – owning a mobile phone with a pull-out antenna.

One Day is available on Netflix from Thursday 8 February