Alice and Steve Don’t Mess With Love (review)
When a mother discovers that her best friend has fallen in love with her daughter, everything goes haywire. A British comedy as funny as it is provocative which transforms the rom’com into a taboo subject.
This is the kind of series that risks raising the temperature during family meals: and would you be ready to accept it?
Alice and Steve are two college friends. In their fifties, they refuse to see their graying hair as the beginning of the end. They go out, drink, laugh and convince themselves that they are still cool. Until the evening when, after one too many drinks, Steve stays to sleep at Alice’s house and runs into her daughter, Izzy. It had been years since he had seen her. Now aged 26, she is brilliant and sophisticated. He is recently divorced. She just left a toxic relationship. One last drink leads to another and Steve ends up sleeping with Izzy. The worst part is that the current passes between them. The feelings are there and, despite their age difference, they quickly understand that their story is worth living. All that remains is to tell Alice…
Obviously, Alice takes it very badly. Very, very bad.
From there, the series orchestrates a delightful chain reaction. Alice decides to do everything to sabotage this relationship which she considers to be an absolute betrayal. Tremendous in fury, Nicola Walker (Last Tango in Halifax) delivers a festival of hysterics, oscillating between sincere pain and destructive hysteria. In just six episodes that we devour in one go, the series transforms this brilliant, fantastically uncomfortable premise into a scathing comedy, as embarrassing as it is endearing.
Because behind the discomfort and the taboos, a question ends up emerging: and ultimately, why not? Don’t Steve and Izzy have the right to be happy? And me, could I really accept that my best friend fucks my daughter? So many questions put through the wringer of biting and subtle British humor.
Screenwriter Sophie Goodhart (formerly of Sex Education) intelligently subverts the codes of romantic comedy to question our certainties about love, age and social conventions. Facing the tornado Walker, New Zealander Jemaine Clement (What We Do in the Shadows) excels in a deliciously phlegmatic register, while the revelation Yali Topol Margalith brings all the freshness necessary to make us believe in this impossible romance.
An irresistible generational trio which also conquered the CanneSéries festival this year, where the series won the prize for best series, the special prize for interpretation for its entire cast and the high school jury prize. Deserved. Alice and Steve is undoubtedly one of the series of the year.
Alice and Steve, in six episodes, to watch on Disney+ from June 8, 2026
