Disney+ has premiered Alice & Steve, a six-episode series that tests the friendship between the two protagonists. The characters' life stage is essential to the story, as the nuances help them grow and understand their reactions. Alice faces the discomforts of menopause while working a uninspiring job and surviving family routines with enough dignity. Steve is a celebrity hairdresser, and therefore, his existence might seem a bit more glamorous. But after a bad divorce and sharing custody of the dog, his daily life has become stuck between loneliness and selfishness. The complicity between the two friends, however, fills their lives. As young people, they were a couple, but it's an anecdotal stage they mention from time to time with a sense of humor. But what seems like an indestructible friendship will only last through the first episode, when Alice discovers that her daughter has gotten involved with Steve, who is twice her age. Izzy is twenty-six years old and has just suffered a romantic disappointment, and in Steve, she sees a stability and protection that she hasn't found in the boys her age.
The comedy fiercely unfolds from the second episode. Alice will try to destroy the relationship that her best friend and her daughter have decided to start. The end justifies the means. Horrified by Izzy's mistake and Steve's lack of scruples, she will act desperately.
As a fictional conflict, the situation is very powerful. The series presents the dilemma by emphasizing comedy and relativizing the drama that may lie behind it. The weight of the plot falls on Alice, magnificently played by Nicola Walker. A woman with the experience and strength of maturity, determined to go to the last consequences to achieve her goal. A protagonist on the edge. The character of Steve very well maintains the ambivalence of shy excitement for the relationship and the guilt for it all. Actor Jemaine Clement conveys the interpretation very well in non-verbal language. The lead duo expresses very well that their friendship was so strong that they don't need words to communicate. And when the war between them begins, that's a very powerful weapon.
The series is exquisitely careful when showing such an unequal romantic relationship. It is obvious that they avoid being explicit. Sexual scenes are avoided, which we know happen because they are verbalized. But the social discomfort caused by the age difference is very well represented, and the script gracefully builds the tensions that arise from it. Alice & Steve develops like the butterfly effect. The relationship between Steve and Izzy will cause an expanding wave that will blow up the environment of the two friends, devastating family and work, in a crescendo full of bad decisions, insecurities and doubts in which the spectator can only do is laugh and humbly put themselves in the characters' place.
