As promised, Normal People has returned for a pair of charity specials that aired as part of Ireland and Northern Ireland's Comic Relief broadcast on Friday night.
Ahead of the specials, Comic Relief co-creator Richard Curtis had teased that Paul Mescal (Connell Waldron) and Daisy Edgar-Jones (Marianne Sheridan) would be joined by a special guest star, and he definitely wasn't bluffing.
In the first special, "Normal People Confessions", Andrew Scott reprises his Fleabag role as the iconic 'hot priest' with both Connell and Marianne paying him a visit in the confessional booth.
It's a funny sketch which cleverly references both Normal People – one of 2020's most talked-about TV shows – and Fleabag, while also giving us an answer to the pressing question: Whatever happened to Connell's chain?
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The second sketch, "Older Normal People", offers a glimpse of what life might be like for Connell and Marianne 40 years down the line.
Irish actors Peter McDonald and Deirde O'Kane portray older versions of Connell and Marianne in a perfectly pitched spoof featuring a rambling conversation in which neither character manages to say quite what they mean.
After the specials aired on Irish network RTÉ on Friday night, Mescal shared a socially distanced selfie of him, Edgar-Jones and Andrew Scott. Total squad goals, obviously.
Though Mescal has recently said that another full season of Normal People is not on the cards, the same creative team including director Lenny Abrahamson is planning to adapt Conversations with Friends – the other novel by Normal People author Sally Rooney.
"Obviously [it] is a cousin of Normal People in a way, but it's also quite different," Normal People co-producer Ed Guiney told The Hollywood Reporter. "We're actively developing that and Lenny [Abrahamson]'s going to direct the opening episodes of that again, and that's very exciting and a lovely thing to be working on during the lockdown."
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