{"id":692045,"date":"2026-06-08T18:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/692045\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T18:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:31:15","slug":"alice-and-steve-review-jemaine-clement-nicola-walker-are-hilarious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/692045\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Alice and Steve’ Review: Jemaine Clement, Nicola Walker Are Hilarious"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Hulu series \u201cAlice and Steve<\/a>\u201d has many aspects of a romantic comedy: witty banter, protagonists with quirky creative jobs and a set piece centered on a dinner party. But the namesake characters are not, in fact, the lovebirds whose ill-advised union serves as the show\u2019s inciting incident. They\u2019re two middle-aged Londoners whose decades-long best friendship is put to the ultimate test when Steve (Jemaine Clement<\/a>), a divorced and childless celebrity hairstylist who yearns for a nuclear family, starts dating Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith) \u2014\u00a0a woman who\u2019s half his age, and also Alice\u2019s (Nicola Walker<\/a>) daughter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tYet \u201cAlice and Steve,\u201d which was created and written by Sophie Goodhart (\u201cRivals\u201d) and directed by Tom Kingsley (\u201cThis Is Going to Hurt\u201d), is aptly named. The lived-in platonic chemistry between Walker and Clement is the show\u2019s highlight and its foundation, keeping the action anchored in something wholesome amid some abominable behavior on both sides of the friends\u2019 growing rift. Steve, of course, is having sex with a woman he\u2019s known since she was a small child, a point \u201cAlice and Steve\u201d touches on without dwelling too long, lest this become a much bleaker show. (Steve also insists he\u2019d never been attracted to Izzy before a spontaneous encounter in Alice\u2019s living room, and the scripts repeatedly emphasize Izzy as an active and enthusiastic pursuer.) But the crisis his poor judgment induces in Alice ends up unmasking her ugly side, and exposing cracks in her own marriage to the sweet, mild-mannered Daniel (Joel Fry).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo it\u2019s necessary for the show to begin by showing us how much fun Alice and Steve have when they\u2019re on good terms. In the first episode, the two attend an open casket funeral where Steve\u2019s beloved French bulldog sneezes on the corpse\u2019s face before devouring Alice\u2019s baggie of special occasion cocaine at a club. Between these two incidents, Alice genuinely encourages Steve to put himself out there and make a connection. There\u2019s a mutual enabling of the kind also seen between Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne\u2019s characters in the Apple TV sitcom \u201cPlatonic,\u201d<\/a> in which two grown adults fight off Father Time by encouraging one another\u2019s arrested development. But there\u2019s also enough evident care and affection to make apparent what\u2019s at stake when Steve blows their lives apart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tUnfortunately, \u201cAlice and Steve\u201d doesn\u2019t extend the same depth of empathy to Izzy, whose desires propel the narrative but whose personhood rarely seems to extend beyond them. Granted, she\u2019s young, and we\u2019re seeing her through the eyes of a mother who pictures her as a child unable to understand the gravity of her decisions. (And Alice may be right!) But we learn little about Izzy\u2019s interests or personality besides a recent breakup that may make Steve a rebound. The vacuum where a fully realized character should be is a potentially critical flaw in a relationship comedy, even if Izzy and Steve\u2019s relationship isn\u2019t the primary one.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a season of just half a dozen, half-hour episodes, \u201cAlice and Steve\u201d squeezes in a surprising number of auxiliary pairs. Daniel, a music teacher feeling abandoned by Alice\u2019s solipsistic spiral, explores a flirtation with a colleague; Alice and Daniel\u2019s son Dom (Tyrese Eaton-Dyce) \u2014 Izzy is Alice\u2019s daughter from an earlier relationship \u2014\u00a0rides out the highs and lows of first love. (The multiplicity of subjects is another quality that makes the Izzy-Steve connection feel undercooked; perhaps more episodes could\u2019ve benefited everyone.) But there\u2019s never any doubt to whom this show belongs, nor would there be even if their names weren\u2019t on the door.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tClement has been well-known as a comedian since the success of \u201cThe Flight of the Conchords.\u201d But while Steve is charming enough to make the viewer understand both Alice\u2019s attraction and her friends\u2019 tentative acceptance, the character has a sweeter, sadder side compared to Clement\u2019s typical jokesters, ignoring all his best friend\u2019s warnings to pursue what he sees as his last chance at happiness. He\u2019s quite good; Walker, however, is a true revelation. (Though not to those who recall her work in \u201cSpooks\u201d or \u201cLast Tango in Halifax.\u201d) It\u2019s remarkable to watch Alice set fire to the moral high ground with spiteful rage. Walker\u2019s face contorts in horror as Steve wins over a pack of suspicious Zoomers, then assumes a rictus of feigned happiness when she briefly tries to play along for Izzy\u2019s sake. She makes Alice charming enough to get away with callous offhand comments to Daniel like \u201cI make your life more fun. You make my life more manageable,\u201d even as they betray that Steve isn\u2019t the only one who ignores basic decency for his own satisfaction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlice and Steve\u2019s feud quickly transcends Steve\u2019s initial transgression, taking on a ferocity that can only come from corrupted love. Lines are crossed; insults are hurled that can\u2019t be taken back, starting with Alice branding her best mate a \u201cfucking pedo loser.\u201d As fuzzy as \u201cAlice and Steve\u201d can feel at its margins, it sees its central characters with all the focused clarity that comes with a certain level of loathing. Like an old friend who\u2019s made a major faux pas, there\u2019s enough tangible history for the audience to look past the flaws.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAll six episodes of \u201cAlice and Steve\u201d are now streaming on Hulu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Hulu series \u201cAlice and Steve\u201d has many aspects of a romantic comedy: witty banter, protagonists with quirky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":692046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[300189,88,300070,300190,92],"class_list":["post-692045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-alice-and-steve","tag-entertainment","tag-jemaine-clement","tag-nicola-walker","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/692046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}