Conversations With Friends, The Staircase, and Netflix woes

Maybe the real treasure was the friends and family we made and lost along the way, plus streaming giant flop era

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May 24, 2022

Hello!

On this week’s episode of Criticism Is Dead, we discuss Conversations With Friends and The Staircase, two adaptations about secrets and pretense.

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01:35 Hulu’s Conversations With Friends initially suffers from the difficult task of adapting its source material, but ultimately reaches satisfying heights.

Conversations With Friends is not an easy story to adapt, compared to Sally Rooney’s second novel Normal People, which is, structurally speaking, a more conventionally straightforward romance between lad and lass. The limited series struggles with that, especially in the first half, which is fairly anemic: thin, lifeless, both rushed and uneventful, and with wobbly characterization, to boot. But keep pushing through and you’ll be rewarded by a latter half that is much more substantial. If you like Rooney’s work and the way that she captures this specific feeling of what it is to be young, then it’s worth it to watch this show all the way through.

pelin @onelongpiece

@BeeBabs every sally rooney novel is basically "intellectualise all you want, you need an orgasm just like everybody else"

20:34 The Staircase, streaming on HBO Max, builds upon a true crime and its accompanying documentary with the addition of one more layer of meta-narrative.

Once you’re about three layers deep into an adaptation — a fictionalized series of a documentary series of a real-life event — you have to really ask yourself what this latest version is bringing to the table. Fortunately, The Staircase has considered its contribution wisely, using the device of filmmaking to prod at questions of objectivity, exploitation, and the spectator draw of true crime. It’s a good watch, even if you (like us) don’t naturally gravitate toward all these recent crime adaptations.