Someone like Matafeo makes it incredibly easy to follow wherever Jessie leads. Through her, “Starstruck” isn’t afraid to let Jessie fail once in a while. If “falling for a movie star” is the potential hook, Matafeo is the one doing the reeling in and doing it with all the confidence that Jessie has. There’s a certain kind of anticipation fueling each of these scenes, regardless of how these characters try to guard their feelings. “Yes, God, Yes” director Karen Maine is behind the camera for the entire series here, bringing a canny sense of timing and closeness to how this pair’s various meetings play out. Matafeo and Patel find ways to make Jessie and Tom make sense in an effortless flirty honeymoon period, as people who stayed friends after a random hookup, or as a bickering couple who already seem to know each other’s weak spots all too well. In that way, they make a convincing pair at pretty much any stage of a potential relationship. Other stories have found fertile ground in the anxieties of how and when exactly to reach out to a new crush, but “Starstruck” thrives on the fact that Jessie and Tom’s chemistry is a surprise to each. “Starstruck” is the kind of best case rom-com that manages to translate the sparky parts of newfound feelings rather than fashion a fairytale from whole cloth. Fame is fickle, but Tom ends up being whatever the show needs him to be at any given moment. Some scenes have him mobbed in broad daylight by unrelated throngs of selfie seekers, others afford him the level of recognition of a series regular on a CW show. He doesn’t have a direct analogue - he’s not an obvious stand-in for an A-lister. It’s both a testament to the show’s strength and the closest thing it has to a weakness that Tom almost doesn’t need to be a movie star at all. For every awkward encounter with someone in Jessie’s circle, there are just as many built on the usual jealousies and misunderstandings and fascinations that come from having a new person around. Somehow, “Starstruck” manages to stay in that sweet spot between ignoring Tom’s celebrity completely and being completely sidelined by it. With Tom, Kate, and even her co-worker Joe, “Starstruck” has a clear handle on the each person’s enthusiasm-to-concern ratio when it comes to any of Jessie’s choices, not just who she’s seeing. Part of that is Matafeo and Snedden’s snappy banter that isn’t so hypercharged it feels manufactured. At Jessie’s part-time job as a nanny, she has a shorthand with the perpetually skeptical boss (Sindhu Vee). Her flatmate Kate (Emma Sidi) has plenty of words of encouragement but also isn’t afraid to give her a stern rebuke when she leans into a self-destructive streak. That’s because “Starstruck” is bolstered at the outset by a web of people in Jessie’s inner circle who feel like they’ve been there forever. Through this year, Tom is pretty much the only new person we see enter Jessie’s life. Tom never quite slips into the “one that got away” regret zone, but the show has fun with how each of them have ways of keeping tabs on each other that have nothing to do with fame. “Starstruck” then gets to follow the logical progression through some playful first few dates, some stretches apart, and various attempts at reconnecting. Series writers Matafeo and Alice Snedden wisely set this six-episode season (which first aired in the UK on BBC Three) over the course of a year.
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