The Medium is Not Enough

Available on Netflix

What happens after romance? It’s an important question, not just for relationships in general but for the genre itself, too. The general narrative thrust of a romance is boy/girl/other meets boy/girl/other, will they won’t they, they do! End of story (give or take an additional separation period when they’re apart and then realise they’re incomplete without one another).

So what to do when it’s sequel time? You break them up and then start again. Or add a baby.

The first season of Netflix’s French rom-com Plan cœur (The Hookup Plan) tried to subvert this well know trope, as well as a few others. It saw Zita Hanrot playing a nearly 30-something woman stuck in an uninspiring job and still hung up on her ex-boyfriend two years after their breakup. Her friends, hoping to help her break out of her rut and find some confidence, decide to hire a male escort (Marc Ruchmann) to take her on a few dates. Except, of course, she falls in love with him. And maybe he with her?

Jules Roberts

It’s Pretty Woman in reverse, of course. The prostitute falls in love with the client and decides to put their former career behind them. But as well as the sex-swap, Plan cœur (The Hookup Plan) also managed to make it a female buddy-buddy dramedy, with the addition of her two friends – the raucous Sabrina Ouazani and the pregnant Joséphine Draï – as well as their boyfriends/fiancés.

And (spoiler alert) the first season didn’t end with everyone getting together. True, there were mini-resolutions, but ultimately, the show decided instead to avoid the usual resolution in favour of a cliffhanger.

Interesting choice, hey?

Yet for some reason, the show squanders that bounty in the second season – and largely can’t even be described as a rom-com or even a romance or a comedy… until its final episode.