Your middle-aged friend starts dating your daughter – drama explores what happens next
For years, Nicola Walker has played detectives, lawyers and women holding complicated lives together. But her latest role in comedy-drama Alice and Steve may be the closest she’s come to playing herself.
The six-part series, written by Sophie Goodhart and co-starring Jemaine Clement, begins with a friendship-shattering premise. Alice (Walker) discovers her best friend Steve (Clement) is dating her 26-year-old daughter, Izzy. What follows is part comedy and part emotional warfare as two middle-aged friends spiral into a battle of resentment, jealousy and revenge.
The show’s central dilemma may be extreme, but when asked how she would react in Alice’s shoes, Walker says the parenting emotions at its heart feel very familiar.
“My son is older and has had a few relationships and, as a mother, every one is unexpected,” she tells BBC News.
“It’s really hard going from having complete control of them as this small entity who believes everything you say and, in their eyes, you’re great at everything.
“Then they become teenagers, they start bringing people home they desire and it’s a massive parenting shift.”
The challenge, she says, is learning when not to intervene.
“You have to just keep your mouth shut, which is the opposite of what Alice does.
“You have to become bovine, my friend told me. You have to just go ‘mm-hmm, mm-hmm’ and behave like a large cow around them, just pretending to agree,” she laughs.
It’s perhaps no surprise then that Walker feels a close connection to Alice.
Despite playing everything from detective Cassie Stuart in Unforgotten to divorce lawyer Hannah Stern in The Split, she says this is the character who feels most like her.
“I’m always playing Alice in every job I’ve ever done,” she says. “I think Alice is nearer to me than anyone else I’ve ever played.”
She explains that it’s because she has the same “rage” as her and “being a parent drives you completely loopy – but you would do anything for your children, so I understand the basics of her personality”.
That relatability is part of what makes Alice more than just an overbearing parent as, behind the chaos and comedy, she’s a woman struggling to accept that her daughter is making choices she can no longer control.
Steve, too, is more complicated than the show’s premise initially suggests.
While audiences may assume he’s simply a middle-aged man dating a much younger woman, Clement says he was drawn to the character because of the conflict at the heart of him.
“What makes Steve human is conflict within yourself – he has something he really wants, which is something he shouldn’t do, and that’s a great conflict when you’re acting.”
The Kiwi actor adds that he suspects many viewers will make up their minds about Steve before they’ve even watched the series and “assume he’s a sleazy guy”.
But both actors argue the show is less interested in assigning blame than exploring an uncomfortable situation from multiple perspectives.
“The writer is careful to show you that if it wasn’t Alice’s daughter, these two people might have a good relationship,” says Walker. “It’s hard to point the finger at any one character and give them blame.”
‘A true hate story’
That refusal to cast anyone as a clear-cut villain is something critics have highlighted in their reviews.
In its four-star review, Radio Times described Alice and Steve as an “impressively wrong-footing drama about love and hate”, praising its ability to balance sharp comedy with more poignant themes.
The review called it a “true hate story” and noted that “while the romantic relationship is the staging point for all the dramatic tension, the more interesting story is about the friendship it’s destroying”.
The Hollywood Reporter was similarly positive, calling the series “sharply funny and unexpectedly touching”.
Rather than asking audiences to choose sides, Alice and Steve repeatedly challenges them to sympathise with people making decisions they might not agree with.
That’s certainly what Walker and Clement are hoping for.
“People believe they know where it’s going but we can promise them it doesn’t go where you think. The writer is much better than that,” says Walker.
Clement agrees: “Neither of us predicted what would happen at the end.”
The series also taps into wider conversations about age-gap relationships and the way they are perceived.
Clement, best known for What We Do in the Shadows and Flight of the Conchords, says he thinks people “would be harsher if it was an older woman with a younger man”.
Walker, meanwhile, says one of the things she loved most about the script, written by Sex Education and Rivals writer Sophie Goodhart, is its portrayal of ageing.
“There’s no self-pity in Alice by the end and I don’t think I’ve ever read that coming from an older woman before. It’s always layered with, ‘I’ve still got it’. But I love the honesty of a woman saying, ‘I’m done and it’s not my time, it’s their time’.”
As for what advice they would give modern daters, both admit they may be out of touch.
“We haven’t dated for a while,” Clement laughs, before eventually settling on one suggestion: “Go to the cinema.”
Walker is even less convinced she should be offering guidance.
“My advice is pointless,” she says. “I’m keeping my mouth shut.”
Given everything she’s just said about parenting, perhaps that’s a lesson Alice could have benefited from too.
Alice and Steve is available to watch on Disney+ from 8 June.
