A sublime Nicola Walker elevates Hulu's so-so Alice And Steve

Alice And Steve has a provocative hook. The titular BFFs have been joined at the hip for three decades, but that changes when a mild-mannered, 50-year-old Steve (Jemaine Clement) starts dating Alice’s (Nicola Walker) daughter, who is half his age. The immediate, increasingly wide rift it causes between the two longtime friends (who are former exes, to make matters ickier!) has reverberations across their personal and professional lives. Created by Sex Education’s Sophie Goodhart and directed by Stath Lets Flats‘ Tom Kingsley, Alice And Steve‘s six 30-minute episodes amusingly explore their mid-life crises in the wake of this jolting development. However, the show doesn’t fully tap into its own potential as a sardonic anti-rom-com or what it wants to say about platonic soulmates. 

For starters, Alice And Steve is unable to meaningfully build up or flesh out Steve’s unexpected romance with the 26-year-old Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith), at least not enough to make it the show’s crux or to justify why Alice’s best friend and her daughter would easily abandon their bond with her. Steve and Izzy hook up when they’re each in a fragile state of mind. She’s just been dumped and moved back home; Steve, having returned from a funeral he attended with Alice, is sleeping over. Sparks fly between him and Izzy on the couch late at night, and bam, they have sex. With limited discussion over the next few days, they become official, confess the truth to a befuddled Alice, and start living together. 

And yet, Steve and Izzy’s romantic feelings aren’t explored beyond their shared interests, like a love for spaghetti vongole and a distaste for swimming. Their relationship is sketched so thinly that it’s tough to buy into it. Admittedly, Steve—who’s been divorced for the past four years, with his pet dog as his only other companion—also wonders if Izzy can do better, before she convinces him that she’s just as into him. If the whole point is that the two of them are acting on a whim and making emotional decisions, then the show doesn’t convey it effectively. At least Clement and Margalith play their characters’ affections for each other with sincerity, even if it doesn’t translate into believable onscreen chemistry. 

Alice is the only one hell-bent on breaking the happy couple up. Weird as it may be, no one else in her family nor Izzy’s circle of friends seems to see a problem in two grown-ups engaging in a consensual relationship. Understandably driven by rage and devastation, Alice makes it her mission to upend her so-called BFF’s life, losing herself in the process. So what starts as a delightful comedy in episode one—wherein Alice and Steve get high and go clubbing to mourn their dead pal—turns into a gnarlier dramedy about the lengths that she will go to to sabotage Steve and Izzy, who take some big next steps in their relationship.