Alice & Jack review: Andrea Riseborough and Domhnall Gleeson are caught in a bad romance

What is it about doomed love that makes for a great story? It’s transporting to watch two people go through it, discovering that what they’ve always wanted is no longer sufficient, that they’ve changed, and—to their dismay—that the love of their life has changed, too. In Blue Valentine, Derek Cianfrance juxtaposed the exhilarating beginning and the crushing end of a six-year relationship. Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story detailed the end of a rocky marriage and the beginning of the new lives that came afterward. We’ve been there; our personal experiences with great relationships and those that end in disaster make bad love stories hit us where we live with the force of a megaton bomb.

One considers a different kind of bomb in the case of Victor Levin’s Alice & Jack, PBS Masterpiece’s treacly six-part romantic drama that premieres March 17. In it, Domhnall Gleeson and Andrea Riseborough play two myopic Londoners looking for love and finding it in each other—only to lose it, find it, and lose it again in a perpetual cycle of misery and doubt. In a grim sort of way, Levin’s show is prime viewing for hopeless romantics; it showcases the pursuit of relationships that don’t work—leaving a string of broken hearts, harassed friendships, and disappointment in its wake—and suggests that it’s beautiful.

What’s more, Alice & Jack depicts desperate yearning as noble. Its six hour-long episodes chart a disastrous 15-year courtship, for lack of a better word, with the somber grace afforded a wake. Viewers who have been caught up by an impactful mutual attraction might relate to some of the unpleasant things it brings out of Alice (Riseborough) and Jack (Gleeson). Passion, after all, can be more powerful than reason, and the ache that comes after a relationship falls apart can be profound. Levin chases after this profundity as haphazardly as Alice and Jack chase after each other.

This epic-length romance begins innocuously enough. During the couple’s wobbly first date, Alice asks a typical question (“What do you do?”) that quickly devolves into something resembling a job interview for Jack. He looks trapped by Alice’s judgmental, probing questions—“Are you religious?” is tossed out before he can sip his whiskey—yet he doesn’t break for the door. Alice, an isolated, wealthy professional who isn’t very delicate with people, throws the gauntlet: “We’ll go to my apartment or part as friendly acquaintances. Either’s fine by me.” Naturally, they go back to her place.

We have to assume the sex is revelatory; it takes place offscreen. (Even those who balk at onscreen intimacy might agree that a love scene would have at least cemented the foundation for this unshakable pairing.) The next day, Jack is sent packing on his walk of shame (she calls it a stroll of conquest), though Alice does leave him with compliments: He’s kind, handsome, and a good lover besides. “You’re wonderful,” she says, on the verge of tears, but leave he must. Why? Such is the emotional tug-of-war that is Alice & Jack; these two might have had quite a life together if the plot didn’t demand they be apart.

This clunkiness extends to every person stuck in the toxic orbit of their will-they-won’t-they. If the series accomplishes anything, it captures the sensation of romantic tunnel vision convincingly enough, though that could be by accident; the supporting cast surrounding the leads is stock generated from Romance Mad Libs. They don’t factor in Alice and Jack’s alarming behavior or react in a way that might cause them to change it. As this takes place between 2007 and “Present Day” (the phones get nicer as we go along, Gleeson grows a beard at one point), the series often skips through time and, in so doing, either glosses over or outright omits character growth, not just for the leads, but for the seemingly important people in their lives.

Paul (Sunil Patel) is Jack’s typical rom-drama work buddy (they’re both medical engineers, for reasons that later become achingly obvious), quick with quips during their many outings (they ride boats, stand in queues, go to the gym, etc.). Paul might function as an audience surrogate—at one point, he observes, “[Alice] does seem pretty cool, in an extremely troubling way”—if his views on relationships weren’t so dim compared to his wayward friend. Paul is Levin’s failsafe; he’s there to mildly criticize Jack’s choices because Levin knows the viewers are doing the same.

If there’s a character who’s allowed an additional dimension, it’s Lynn (Aisling Bea), whom Jack meets after his first breakup with Alice. When she becomes pregnant, he proposes marriage (after some cursory hemming and hawing about their “options”), though to create a semblance of friction in an otherwise frictionless drama, Lynn as a character develops almost comic self-awareness: “You don’t know me,” she protests. “I’m just an outline of a person. A sketch.”

They marry and have the child anyway. (Their daughter, Celia, is played in her teenage years by Millie Ashford.) When Jack inevitably crashes into Alice, the encounter leads him to admit to his wife that he’s devoted every waking thought not to his family but to his ex, his emotional betrayal forcing her to divorce him, as it must. While Lynn is the only character who experiences a personality change from this development (her opinions on Jack go from faint love to outright hostility, which is fair), she remains a sketch. Everyone does.

To separate Jack from Alice is to understand the heart of this duet. Riseborough fares best; her experience playing obscure objects of desire (Mandy) and broken people (Nancy, To Leslie) allows her to flex in a way that makes Alice & Jack seem better than it is. Conveying her character’s guarded vulnerabilities is Riseborough’s strength, so it becomes the show’s strength.

There’s no question she’s the source of Alice and Jack’s chemistry. In fact, it’s bewildering to watch Gleeson’s aw-shucks appeal contrast with his co-star’s edge. Gleeson taps into private agony well, and he plays Jack delicately and thoughtfully. However, Gleeson’s overt gentleness comes off as obsequiousness in the context of the relationship. What’s the attraction on Alice’s part? Is the sex really that good? Having Gleeson match or even rival Riseborough’s charisma wouldn’t have saved Alice & Jack, but at least we might have understood why these two so often scorch the earth around them just to be in each other’s arms.

Blue Valentine and Marriage Story are fine examples of the doomed love genre because they show how personal growth creates rifts between two people. Both display how couples change over time due to shifting priorities, the economic pressures of raising a family, or losing one’s sense of self. Alice & Jack isn’t concerned with change; it traps its leads in amber, perfect as they were the day they met fifteen years ago. If everyone was as young, attractive, and available as they were the day they met their significant others, there wouldn’t be such things as breakups or divorce. “Love is the best thing we have,” Jack tells us. “Maybe after we strip away all the bullshit, it’s the only thing we have.” In Alice & Jack, doomed love isn’t tragic or idyllic; it’s morbid.

Alice & Jack premieres March 17 on PBS Masterpiece