Since we’re in rom-com season and the return of Starstruck is quickly approaching, Vulture is returning to where the romance began with weekly recaps of season one. Rewatch along with us and check back every Thursday morning for the next episode.
It’s February, friends, which means that if you “subscribe to the western notion†of Valentine’s Day, then love is in the air! You know what? Even if you think Valentine’s Day is complete bullshit (you are not alone, and this is a safe space!), love can still be in the air. Love is great, and kissing is great, and stories about love and kissing, well, they’re even better. Who doesn’t love a romantic comedy? In any medium, the rom-com is there to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, and isn’t it nice to feel warm and fuzzy inside? The genre gets dismissed a lot by people who, I have to assume, are dead inside, but that’s on them. To dismiss all rom-coms is to miss out on some truly great writing, wonderful performances, and people to root for. It feels so good to root for people!
Like any genre, this one has its peaks and valleys, but it’s been especially fun to discover that in the last few years, television has been the go-to destination for the best new examples of romantic comedy. Don’t get me wrong, I will forever keep the late ’80s-slash-1990s Nora Ephron–Meg Ryan trifecta in constant rotation and will recommend newer entries Palm Springs, Plus One, and The Half of It to those in need, but it’s nice to now also have shows like Jane the Virgin, Lovesick, and seasons one through six of Younger to turn on for a rom-com fix. Continuing that TV rom-com tradition — elevating it, even — is Rose Matafeo’s Starstruck, which was easily the best thing I watched in 2021. It’s smart and laugh-out-loud funny and so, so swoony. It’s also a rom-com for the rom-com lover, right down to the premise. It has its roots in Notting Hill in that here, like in the Hugh Grant–Julia Roberts classic, a movie star and a normie fall for one another in London, and shenanigans ensue. But simply calling it a modern adaptation of Notting Hill (lord, like Notting Hill, which came out in 1999, is even that old) is a bit reductive because Starstruck is very much its own thing. But before we can get to Starstruck’s own brand of comedy and chemistry and, yes, kissing, this is a rom-com, folks, and it all starts with the meet-cute. You gotta have a good meet-cute.
Which is how we end up in a men’s public restroom at a London club on New Year’s Eve. Our heroine, Jessie, is in her late 20s and very much not into New Year’s or the complete bore her roommate and best friend Kate is chatting up about investing in aluminum and what bitcoin actually is — but Jessie is the consummate wing woman. She also knows that you can survive any terrible night out by double-fisting gin and tonics and red wine. This, of course, lands her in the line for the bathroom, and when she sees how long the wait is for the women’s room, like so many of us, she beelines it for the very empty men’s room. It’s there Jessie — “a very normal girl†as she tells anyone who may be hiding in a stall — can do her “James, James Bond†impression with abandon. Only, Jessie is not alone. It doesn’t take long for a handsome stranger to come out of the stall and agree with her that she is, in fact, very drunk. Their conversation is anything but flirty, and it seems like Jessie remains mostly unimpressed with this dude giving her crap.
They bump into each other again at the bar. Their conversation is mostly fueled by annoyance, but Jessie does tell the guy that he reminds her of someone who works at the Shepherd’s Bush Superdrug, someone she describes as both “schmoking†and “awoooga,†so you know she’s into this guy even if she doesn’t know it yet. As the countdown to midnight starts, they both agree that they definitely don’t have to kiss just because they’re standing next to each other. That would be ridiculous.
So, of course, we smash cut to the two of them going at it in the back of a cab, and not long after, they’re having drunk sex back at his place. All of this is fine. However, it doesn’t start to get interesting until the next morning, when Jessie sneaks downstairs for some water and comes face-to-face with a big movie poster that has the guy she just had a one-night stand with all over it. He isn’t some random dude at the bar who looks like the guy from the Shepherd’s Bush Superdrug — he’s the movie star Tom Kapoor.
Obviously, if you know the premise of the show, you saw this reveal coming from the start, but the best part isn’t the reveal that Tom is famous and Jessie didn’t recognize him; the best part is her reaction once she finds out who he is. She isn’t excited — she’s upset and freaked out. “This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,†she tells Tom when she wakes him up to yell at him for not telling her who he is. Of course, he did tell her, sort of — we get a flash to a late-night cereal sex break in which he tells her he’s an actor and her response is, perfectly, “No thanks.†Their conversation quickly turns into flirting, and honestly, it is taking all of my will not to just transcribe the whole thing — from them both admitting they faked their orgasms to them assuring the other that they weren’t trying very hard to them trying to “win at kissing†— because it is so fun and crackling with chemistry, and it’s from this moment on that you are rooting for these two to get together. It happens so fast and so quickly you forget that getting you immediately on the side of the two leads can be a tricky thing to pull off. Starstruck makes it look easy.
Once Jessie gets home, she participates in one of the greatest rituals in female friendship: the morning after download. Just as Jessie and Tom have an easy rapport, so do Jessie and Kate — Jessie doesn’t really have to say much to get Kate to figure out that she slept with Tom Kapoor. And then Kate does what best friends do best and cheers along with Jessie, who tells her that not only did she have sex with Tom, but she got her period two hours later, a true miracle. “Touched by an angel,†Jessie declares the timing, and Kate reminds her friend that Tom is a super hot movie star and she is “a little rat nobody,†but in the most loving, supporting way. The friends laugh it all off, knowing that Jessie sleeping with Tom Kapoor is simply a great one-night stand story.
Until it becomes two nights: On Jessie’s way from work at the movie theater, she bumps into Tom again. It seems so weird and coincidental until Tom explains that she left her phone charger at his place, and he remembered she said she worked at a theater near the Overground in Hackney. Only, that charger definitely isn’t hers, and all of it smacks of someone who really, really wanted to see her again. He’s just so smitten with her, and it is unbelievably endearing. The two wind up walking home together — again, the flirty banter on this show is just top-notch — and soon find themselves awkwardly standing outside Tom’s flat, wondering what they should do next. Neither wants to seem too eager, but both definitely want to hook up again. Jessie prefaces their decision by making sure Tom knows she has her period, which she knows might be a deterrent. But Tom stops her before she even finishes her thought: “You do know I’m an adult man, don’t you?†he asks before planting a stomach-flipping kiss on her. Is that not the hottest thing this very hot man could’ve said at this moment? Like, I know it means my bar is very low, but I am sweating. I’m sweating!
Jessie is very into it as well, and they end up spending another night in Tom’s bed. The next morning, Tom wants to get to know Jessie a bit better — he is so into her, I am dying — but it’s clear Jessie still has her guard up. For instance, he wants to know about her family and her job, whereas Jessie’s “getting to know you†questions are “What’s your favorite color?†and “What’s your second favorite color?†Letting Tom in and taking this fling seriously seems like something Jessie will have to confront in the long run. Although it turns out maybe Jessie was right to keep those guards up: While Tom hops in the shower, she finds a bedside table drawer full of another woman’s belongings. She’s hurt and appalled, and she races out of the apartment only to be met by a gaggle of paparazzi waiting outside shouting things like “home-wrecker!†in her direction. Both thankfully and unfortunately, the photographers all stop almost immediately upon seeing Jessie, deciding she must be Tom’s cleaner — there’s no way she could be sleeping with him.
It only gets worse. On the bus ride home, Jessie finds an article about Tom out on a romantic date with his girlfriend as recently as Christmas. You can see it all on Jessie’s face: She feels like an idiot for believing even for a minute that her hookup with a movie star could be something real.
Love Notes
• A great rom-com lead comes with a great sidekick, and Jessie’s roommate Kate compliments her in the best way— a little more neurotic and wacky but loving and supportive. Don’t you hate when you don’t understand why two people on a TV show are friends? That’s not a problem here. Plus, Kate bags that dweeby aluminum investment guy, so that’s nice.
• Jessie arguing with a pretentious patron at the movie theater over Schindler’s List is a great bit with the perfect button: “What is wrong with me? I kind of loved that; that was hot.â€
• Jessie has a second job as a part-time nanny, which she shows up for on New Year’s Day in her dress from the night before and promptly hops onto the sofa with the two kids and asks, “Now, who has seen Goodfellas?†The mother of those kids seems less than impressed.
• “There is this amazing abandoned warehouse that I really want to show you.â€