A REEL LOVE STORY

'White Lotus' star Aimee Lou Wood has co-written a telly series that's warm, funny and loving.

- By Lydia Spencer-Elliott

Aimee Lou Wood had one coping mechanism when the world locked down in 2020: to watch as many films as physically possible, so she could experience something bigger than the confines of her small flat. As weeks turned into months, The White Lotus and Sex Education star hunkered down and inhaled classics from Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz to Ridley Scott's Alien. Soon, she landed on the idea for Film Club, a six-part BBC romcom about an agoraphobic twentysomething called Evie (Wood), who hosts elaborate fancy-dress movie nights in her mum's garage. Evie's ulterior motive? To spend time with the boy she has feelings for, but is scared to confess her love to.

“TV during that time was the only way you could access the world,” Wood said of the long isolation period, while speaking at the series' launch last month. “We needed plot. We needed to be taken away. We needed escape.”

Film Club, co-written by Wood's theatre school friend, former housemate and House of the Dragon star Ralph Davis, is sort of like being let in on all of a friendship's private jokes at once. The smart, pacy dialogue was inspired by old-school romcoms like Norah Ephron and Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally and James L Brooks's Broadcast News, as well as Wood and Davis's own bouncy vernacular, exchanged over endless hours typing at their kitchen table. “We just laughed and laughed,” said Davis, who explained that they “narcistically” built a world around their unique friendship and sense of humour, to see shyness and silliness on screen at a time when televised love is often much more smouldering.

The pandemic popularised a moody kind of romance drama – one filled with long gazes and periods of silence à la Normal People. “It was quite sparse dialogue. Just people staring at each other in quite a sexy way,” reflected Wood. “So, we wanted nerds to fall in love. We wanted to see neurotic, messy people falling in love instead of really cool, silent people.”