Worth seeing:

to watch a group of friends building their entire social life around their passion for cinema

Featuring:	Aimee Lou Wood, Nabhaan Rizwan, Suranne Jones, Adam Long, Arian Nik, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Kai Assi, Lisa McGrillis, Liv Hill, Owen Cooper, Ralph Davis
Key crew:	Catherine Morshead, Alison Jackson, Nawfal Faizullah, Stella Merz, Aimee Lou Wood, Anna Jordan, Ralph Davis
Channel:	BBC iPlayer, BBC3
Length:	30 minutes
Episodes:	6
Broadcast date:	7th October 2025
Country:	UK

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Evie (Aimee Lou Wood) and Noa (Nabhaan Rizwan) have been best friends since childhood.

Now young adults, they keep their friendship alive by enjoying a weekly Film Club in Evie’s garage, where they gather friends to watch classic movies, dressed up as their favourite characters.

Well – it’s not Evie’s garage, as such – she’s moved back in with her mother, Suz (Suranne Jones), while she recovers from a mental health episode.

All of which is giving Evie time to think about what she wants from life – her boyfriend Josh (Adam Long) seems to get on better with Suz than he does with her – and her thoughts are focused when Noa gets a job offer that forces him to move out of town.

WHAT’S IT LIKE?

Given the agoraphobia that accompanied Evie’s mental health episode, Film Club is necessarily claustrophobic – largely taking place in her Mum’s house, garage and driveway. It makes what has the potential to be a broad exploration of humanity through cinema feel oddly parochial.

This was crying out for the theme of each episode to be tied to the themes of the films enjoyed by the characters, but there is very little consistency and few lessons to be learned from classics such as The Wizard of Oz and Alien. Peppering their conversations with lines from films – often unrelated to the ones they’re watching – makes it feel more like the writers are trying to show off than that the characters are truly passionate about cinema.

It’s clear from the outset that more than anything else, this is a “will-they-won’t-they” centred on Evie and Noa, which feels uncomfortable, given her pre-existing relationship – they have to try to make Josh seem controlling and unreliable, to justify Evie’s clear longing for Noa – but they don’t really even have the courage of their conviction to do that.

The mood is uneven – one minute, it’s trying to explore mental health, while the next, a character is racing through town on a bicycle, dressed as the Tin Man from Oz.

There’s a warmth to the central pair, and there’s earnestness to their situation, but in its insecurity about its genre, the drama is either predictable or unbelievable and the humour is almost entirely absent. The two main characters are constantly miserable, so most attempts at humour have to come from the eccentric supporting cast, which further unbalances the atmosphere.

Like too many programmes – Normal People springs to mind – it leaves you increasingly frustrated; you just want to shout at them – “If you like each other, stop wasting my time and do something about it.” Emotional tensions is fine – but there’s not enough going on to drag it out for six episodes. And despite Noa accepting a job that should force them to engage with their situation, it seems to take forever for it to come to head.

We don’t learn much about mental health – we don’t learn anything about young love – and there’s a peculiar recurring cameo from the Emmy-Award-winning Adolescence star Owen Cooper, who does nothing more than cycle around the neighbourhood and throw stones at Evie’s window.

Film Club is a bit of a mess – it can’t really decide what it wants to be or what it’s trying to do. But its ultimate aim, of teasing a relationship between the two main characters, is so obviously signposted that you just want them to get on with it and get back to the films.