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.