Blood Harmony Volume 30: Starstruck
I finally watched the HBO Max show Starstruck after both
and multiple members of my local library’s Romance Lovers book club recommended it. As a romance lover, I was primed for it. Starstruck is the story of Jessie, a New Zealander living in London who sleeps with a guy on New Year’s Eve called Tom, who turns out to be a famous actor. Hijinks ensue and over the course of three seasons, they have an on-again, off-again romance that’s complicated by his fame and profession. Season 1 is the most romance novel-y of the seasons, with Jessie and Tom meeting cute and continuing to have will-they-won’t-they tension throughout. Season 2, the darkest of the seasons, is about what happens when they finally get together but Jessie is afraid to commit fully and ends up drawn back into a dysfunctional relationship with her ex, the dreaded Ben. Season 3 is easily the most interesting of the seasons. It starts with a incredibly concise and beautiful rendering of their fully committed relationship that ends for a variety of reasons (distance, priorities, etc.) only to time skip two years into the future and have them reconnect at a wedding. Tom is now engaged and Jessie has a new love interest but there’s still something between them that ultimately gets resolved in a wonderfully bittersweet way. It’s not a typical romance novel ending but it is deeply satisfying.Starstruck was created by its star, Rose Matafeo, a stand-up comedian, actor and writer from New Zealand and her best friend Alice Snedden, a similarly multi-talented Kiwi. Snedden shows up in Starstruck as Amelia, Jessie’s hilariously deadpan friend. They are clearly romcom afficionados. There are nods to Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, The Graduate and a whole host of classic Hollywood films thanks to Jessie’s job at the local rep cinema. Matafeo and Snedden together created a perfectly flawed and funny protagonist. Jessie struggles and makes bad decisions and sometimes treats people terribly. But she’s also a magnetic presence, full of charm and wit. British actor Nikesh Patel plays Tom. He’s great in the show, giving his character a nice sense of internal struggle. They have lovely chemistry together which is, of course, essential to the genre.
Starstruck is a show that understands that in romance, the side characters are nearly as important as the main couple. Jessie has a very funny group of friends (shout out to Shivani, the grumpiest and greatest of them all!) who evolve over the course of the show as she does, some ticking off the traditional adult boxes of marriage and children and some staying apace with her. She and her best friend and roommate Kate, played marvelously by Emma Sidi, have a particularly ferocious platonic love for one another that I’ve never quite seen the equal of on screen before. By the final season, I would argue that theirs is the true love story of Starstruck.
The show is unabashedly sex and body positive. Jessie gets a lot of action over the course of three seasons with Tom and a number of other partners. As always, I would have loved to seen ANY CHARACTER use a condom but I guess not every show can be the original American Queer as Folk. And beside a very funny gag about Jessie being mistaken by the paparazzi for Tom’s cleaner and Tom’s family snidely commenting that Jessie must be funny after seeing her picture, the show tells us what we already know: that Matafeo is beautiful. Her partners and her friends treat her as such. Also, her wardrobe is fantastic! Would wear it all!
Starstruck also gives us the joy that is Minnie Driver as Tom’s horrible agent, a wonderful array of old movie references, a murder mystery dinner episode and a good smattering of holiday and wedding scenes. There are six twenty minute episodes per season and three seasons total. Prepare yourself for a binge.
Favorite exchange of the whole show:
Jessie: He just asked if I was around for a drink this afternoon.
Kate: You freak. What did you say?
Jessie (sounding cool and mysterious): I said I might be.
Kate (grabs Jessie’s phone and reads her text): Lol. Yeah. Keen, keen, keen. Where and when? I’m free all day.
Other Things
More romance! My library’s Romance Lovers Book Club chose a spooky book for this month. While I didn’t really enjoy Pride + Prejudice + Zombies the book, I do recommend the movie version of it which is very zany and fun! Give me more Lily James, Cersei with an eye patch and Suki Waterhouse killing zombies and looking for husbands.
Over at
, Julia Turshen recently had a great post about how tasty and easy quiches can be (big hint: use frozen pie crusts!). I made one with a block of feta cheese, a bag of frozen spinach and carmelized onions that was delicious. I also made this peak Fall cake which was kind of a pain but ultimately very good.I’m watching The Morning Show and recommending it to everyone I talk to so I have people to process it with. I sincerely believe that it is the world’s most expensive telenovela. But also parts of it look like it was maybe made by AI. Is it because it is filmed in California but it’s supposed to look like New York? Too many filters? Why is the soundtrack so…strange? But also expensive? Why do Reese and Jennifer now only show up together in 1 minute increments with no other cast members around? Why do the Anniston/Hamm sex scenes make me so uncomfortable? Can we get a Yanko spinoff? Are you sold on it yet?
And finally, this NPR story about Gen Z folks in the U.K. embracing Northern Soul dance parties gave me great joy.