Andrea Riseborough and Domhnall Gleeson Can't Close the Distance Between Alice & Jack

Crafting the perfect will-they/won't-they romance is an art form, in and of itself. It's challenging enough to find actors with the right chemistry to sell a meet-cute or a passionate affair, but it's even more difficult to keep viewers engaged as characters are forced apart by circumstance, emotional baggage, or contrived plot twists. Unite star-crossed lovers too soon and you kneecap any narrative tension that's been building; drag the process out for too long and you run the risk of losing the audience entirely.

Like recent hit One Day, Victor Levin's Alice & Jack lands somewhere in the middle, bringing its eponymous characters together at various points throughout the six-episode season, only to drive a wedge between them. Over the course of 15 years, Alice (Andrea Riseborough, who also appears in The Regime), an aloof and enigmatic financial analyst, and Jack (Domhnall Gleeson), an idealistic medical researcher, cycle in and out of each other's lives, never quite syncing up despite their obvious feelings for one another. As time passes, their connection deepens, but so too does their reluctance to cross the line between friendship and romance, leaving them in relationship limbo as they navigate career advancements, health crises, and past traumas.

PBS Masterpiece, which broadcasts the show in the United States (it premiered in the U.K. on Valentine's Day), describes Alice & Jack as "a love story for the ages," but if that's the case, it's one characterized by small moments of intimacy, rather than grand romantic gestures. Their first date is almost comically bad (though for those who have met someone on an app, quite realistic), as Alice grills Jack about why he's so dedicated to curing a rare disease and offers scant details about her own work, but Jack can't ignore the bud of curiosity that blossoms.

When Alice invites him back to her place, he accepts; their night of passion consists of a lengthy, tentative kiss, followed by a swift boot into the street in the early hours of the morning. The only remarkable thing about the encounter is the contradictory nature of Alice's behavior: She insists Jack is "wonderful" — "You're kind and you're handsome, you're a good lover," she says — and leans into their goodbye hug, yet asks him not to reach out again. Jack, however, senses there's "subtext" to her request, and he clings on to that hope long after Alice has ended things and stopped taking his calls.

While big milestones draw Alice and Jack back together — including her mother's funeral, which offers key clues about her backstory and her reasons for pushing Jack away — Levin and directors Juho Kuosmanen and Hong Khaou are most interested in exploring the seemingly mundane ways in which their love manifests. In this world, love is not a rain-soaked makeout or a boombox serenade; it's a back-scratch done just the way you like, a long walk along the water, a text message that goes unsent until the exact right words can be found. The deeply personal nature of these moments gives the show an ethereal quality, as if Alice and Jack are coasting along in their own private bubble while everything else stands still around them.

These glimpses into Alice and Jack's relationship reveal important information about their characters, but they're so limited that it feels as if the drama has skipped a few important steps. The two have a habit of making sweeping statements about how "different" their connection is from anything they've experienced in the past, but what plays out on screen doesn't communicate that kind of all-consuming obsession. If Alice is so determined not to "lose" Jack, you wouldn't know it from the years she spends out of contact with him; it's equally surprising when Jack tells his friend Paul (Sunil Patel) that Alice "blew a hole in [his] soul" after just two dates, the second of which ended when Alice was astonishingly rude to a museum employee. Leaps like these defy the "show, don't tell" adage, making their romance feel just as improbable as the chance meeting that reinvigorates their friendship a decade after their first date.

The amount of time that passes between Alice and Jack's encounters casts further doubt on their enduring love. The show's many time jumps, which range anywhere from 3 months to 6 years, are meant to convey the power of their bond — no matter what, they find their way back to each other — but they have the unintended effect of raising questions about whether Alice and Jack are right for each other. Those concerns become particularly salient after Jack meets Lynn (Aisling Bea), whom he marries upon learning she's pregnant, as he's found someone willing to open up to him and share in life's highs and lows. When he throws it all away for Alice, it's not endearing, but frustrating to watch him prioritize a woman with whom he's spent roughly 24 hours over his charismatic, quick-witted wife.

Alice & Jack acknowledges the irrational nature of Jack's pining, to a certain extent. Paul often serves as the voice of reason, reminding Jack to tread carefully to preserve things with Lynn and later cautioning him against getting "sucked into the Alice dysfunction vortex." Jack even admits that his inability to get Alice out of his head is "ridiculous," as "the ratio of time spent with a person to time spent brokenhearted over that person" should be one-to-one, not "one-to-60,000."

But Levin is so convinced that this romance is epic enough to overcome a silly obstacle like the passage of time that the show doesn't linger on these doubts. Any legitimate worries about their relationship or clashing personalities are waved away in the name of love — not the "unfettered and uncomplicated" sort that Alice finds with another man, but the "exhausting" and "brutal" kind that leaves someone unmoored for a decade-plus. Real love, Alice & Jack posits, hurts, and anything less than a relationship that both uplifts and crushes the soul isn't worth pursuing.

Though Alice & Jack fails to fulfill its grand romantic vision, Riseborough and Gleeson remain a high point. What limited access viewers get into their connection works because of their diligent performances, which blend pathos with surprising moments of comedy that offer hints of what Levin was going for with their relationship. In later episodes, Alice and Jack finally find a way to coexist and spend much-needed time together, and as their journey takes a tragic turn, the actors play off each other, building toward an emotional finale.

True to genre conventions, that conclusion is a real tear-jerker, but it would hit harder if Alice and Jack's relationship had been better developed earlier in the season, and if Riseborough and Gleeson had been given more time to explore their characters' ostensibly insatiable desire. Sadly, though, Alice & Jack is so committed to keeping these soulmates at a distance that it fails to effectively communicate why they should be together in the first place.

Alice & Jack premieres Sunday, March 17 on Masterpiece on PBS.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.