Stream It or Skip It: ‘In Love All Over Again’ on Netflix, About Two People Who Spend Two Decades Getting Together and Breaking Up

It gets tiring to watch star-crossed lovers being put through the wringer by screenwriters, who have to find new and creative ways to keep a destined pair from getting together or being happy together for any period of time. A new series from Spain examines one such couple, as it goes back and forth from 2003 to 2022.

IN LOVE ALL OVER AGAIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Shots of people walking on a college campus. “That’s Julio,” says a voice over, “And this is Irene.” “Madrid, October 23, 2003.”

The Gist: In 2021, Irene (Georgina Amorós) is writing a screenplay about her relationship with Julio (Franco Masini), someone that has been in and out of her life for close to two decades, since she was a freshman at a film school in Madrid.

Back in her home province of Castellón, Irene has to let her boyfriend Fer (Albert Salazar) down easily; she feels she’ll be in Madrid for school, so dating seems like it’s out of the question. He thinks they can make it work and convinces her not to break up with him.

As soon as she gets to film school, she meets a group that will become her roommates, including Da (Carlos González), an aspiring screenwriter who right away quizzes Irene on which of Pedro Almodóvar’s films she likes the best. He punches up the screenplay she wrote for a short film she wants to direct, and encourages her to find her storytelling style and a bit of a persona.

Julio is a prelaw student who shares an apartment with his father, who is actually a lot less uptight than Julio is. He thinks life’s too short to study things like Roman law.

Da manages to score tickets to the premiere of one of their favorite director’s latest films. He and Irene go to the premiere, and at the end of the film, she looks over and sees Julio, who goes to the same school, crying the way she did. She’s determined to meet him and ask him to be the lead in her short film.

She manages to do just that at the afterparty, and Julio even gets her close to the off-putting director by requesting he sign his thigh. Julio is full of those kinds of contradictions, but it gets him invited to the director’s apartment for an after-afterparty. He manages to get Da and Irene invited, as well.

On the way home from there, on the morning of March 11, 2004, a bomb goes off on the train, right as the two of them leaned in to kiss. It changes the path of their relationship in a lot of ways, not the least of which is the fact that Fer comes over from Castellón to be by Irene’s side.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There are shows that examine the ins and outs of a relationship over the years, but the best comparison we can give In Love All Over Again is to take the romantic aspects of How I Met Your Mother/Father and make a series all about that.

Our Take: Carlos Montero, the creator of In Love All Over Again (Original title: Todas las veces que nos enamoramos), isn’t trying to create a narrative where this on-again, off-again, on-again relationship between Julio and Irene is anything but a romantic comedy. It’s not about two people who are cruel to each other or about a doomed romance that ends in tragedy. It’s about two people with a strong bond who enter and exit each other’s lives over two decades.

What the series’ format will do is break up the story a bit, showing the status of Julio and Irene in 2021-22 and then jump back to show how that bond was built. It’s very This Is Us in a way, though we’re not going to get a death twist like that show had — at least we hope we don’t.

One of the things that Montero needs to guard against is contriving eye-rolling ways to keep these two intensely-connected people apart. We’re already sensing something like that might be afoot, when he ties their first meeting into the very real Madrid terrorist bombings that killed 193 people back in 2004. Bypassing the idea that a real-life terrorist attack that killed scores of people is being used as a convenient way to keep Julio and Irene apart, just the idea that Fer seems to decide for Irene that she’s going back to Castellón feels like an extreme stretch to artificially separate her from Julio.

Maybe our fears here will be unfounded, and Fer will integrate himself into the group instead of being a rival. It also may be a situation where Julio and Irene just think they’re better off as friends, even though they know they’re fooling themselves. We’re inclined to stick with it, because Montero has put together a good ensemble that promises some fun ’00s hangout scenarios will play out while the romantic stuff sorts itself out.

Sex and Skin: We see Julio’s bare butt in the hospital as he goes to Irene’s room. We also see one of Irene’s new roomies run through the apartment naked, covering his privates, when the shower water goes cold.

Parting Shot: In 2021, thirtysomething Julio sees thirtysomething Irene writing her screenplay at a coffee shop, knocks on the window, says hi and comes inside. “Shit,” Irene says to herself.

Sleeper Star: Hands down, it’s Carlos González as Da, who seems to have a fully-intact auteur persona even though he’s only in college. But we also know he can’t hold his liquor.

Most Pilot-y Line: Amorós is 24 and Masini is 28. They’re essentially being asked to play their characters from 18 (or maybe 22?) to 38 (or maybe 42?). That feels like a huge range to us, and we’re not sure that they’re going to pull off the older end of the spectrum.

Our Call: STREAM IT. An appealing ensemble, including two leads with chemistry from the get go, make In Love All Over Again a show we can watch, despite the fact that we have concerns about the storytelling aspect of the series.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.