In the penultimate episode of Rose Matafeo’s bite-size but thoroughly brilliant comedy, Starstruck, her character Jessie is asked: “Why are you here?” She has, she says, “no idea”, and begins to reel off a list of things she hates about London: the air is “literally poison”, the relationship she moved over from New Zealand for didn’t work out, she has no family around her and her highly strung best friend Kate is her emergency contact. “I’ve not done anything and I’m so old. I’m 28. I thought I’d at least be divorced by now. At least be with someone … I don’t have a person.” She buries her head in her hands, defeated. But it turns out the question wasn’t quite what she thought. Her cinema colleague Dan wasn’t asking for a precis of her 20s but rather enquiring why she had come in on her day off.
Although Jessie was having a terrible time of her “overseas experience”, what made Starstruck so memorable was not that it was a tear-soaked sadcom but something altogether more fantastical. Indeed, the title referred to Jessie’s biggest problem: not her low-paid jobs, her tiny east London flatshare or the fact that even the charity shop didn’t rate her clothes, but that she had slept with – and frequently found herself bumping into – a film star named Tom Kapoor (Nikesh Patel). She didn’t recognise him at first, beginning their initial booze-fuelled encounter with “do you work at the Shepherd’s Bush Superdrug?” It was basically the 2021 version of Notting Hill, and – gladly – like the 90s, all the meet-cutes happened in real life rather than in the ninth circle of dating app hell. At just over 20 minutes an episode, it was a sweet, gentle, moreish confection that could have easily stretched to more than its six episodes.
While the central premise of Starstruck was fictional, there were parallels with Matafeo’s life. She is an overachiever who started performing standup comedy as a teen and scooped an Edinburgh comedy award in 2018 with a show about her adolescent lust for Franz Ferdinand singer Alex Kapranos. She too left New Zealand for London and has connections with Shepherd’s Bush (she lived there in the mid 2010s with her then-boyfriend James Acaster). At some point, you imagine, she has probably had her own Jessie moment as she stood almost 12,000 miles away from home. Even if she hasn’t, Matafeo beautifully conveyed the sentiment of being far from everything and everyone you love and feeling like you might have made a terrible mistake, or a few. Naturally, Jessie decides to move back home, although she – and the viewer – know that this will solve none of her problems (and really, being a film buff, she should know that, as per Breakfast at Tiffany’s, “no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself”).
As in Matafeo’s standup sets, Jessie is supremely confident and a total troublemaker with a glint in her eye. Her confidence is part of what makes the series such a delight to watch, such as when she turns up for her nannying job in last night’s multicoloured sequin dress and demands that her young charges let her watch Goodfellas. She is young, spontaneous and looking for love, even if the thought of a one-night stand with a celebrity initially fills her with dread, and leads her to jump to several wrong conclusions based on Daily Mail headlines. Indeed, Matafeo and Alice Snedden’s script is loaded with the kinds of misunderstandings and awkward moments that deftly extend the “will they, won’t they?” conundrum through all the episodes. The script is also just the right side of heartbreaking, not least when Jessie describes her situation with Tom as like “[seeing] a labrador and a hedgehog who are friends”, him being the labrador in the analogy (his icy agent, played by Minnie Driver, has of course already warned him against dating “civilians”).
Gladly, a second series is on the cards, a relief for those who hadn’t quite had their fill of Jessie and Tom. And for everyone who hasn’t watched it yet – whether you have an emergency contact, or you’re still waiting for your own meet-cute – it is sure to bring you nothing but joy.
