Alice and Steve, starring Jemaine Clement (left) and Jari Topol Margaris, is available to stream on Disney+ in Canada.Lara Cornell/Provided
Wrong com is a popular genre in the television industry.
Everywhere you look on your small streaming screen, comedy characters keep dating characters they shouldn’t really be dating.
In particular, relationships between professors and students have become a recurring inciting incident in 2026. Examples include HBO Max’s “Rooster” (available on Crave in Canada), Netflix’s “Vladimir” and Apple TV’s “Margo’s Got Money Trouble.”
Ten years after #MeToo, screenwriters seem hungry to explore age differences and power imbalances without getting too dramatic about the subject. They are more interested in what happens after the heart desires what it desires.
The new British comedy “Alice and Steve,” available on Disney+ in Canada, is the pinnacle of “complicated” relationship comedy.
The six-part series, written by Sophie Goodhart, centers on the romance between Izzy, a 26-year-old woman played by Jari Topol Margaris (Google it, yes, Fiddler on the Roof, Topol’s granddaughter!), and Steve, a 50-year-old man played by Jemaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords, What We Do in the Shadows).
Year after year review: A slow-burning young love comes to a Canadian cottage
Age difference is just one issue here. Steve is also a longtime best friend of Izzie’s mother, Alice. The two became friends after dating briefly more than 25 years ago.
Alice is played by the wonderful British actor Nicola Walker, who I know best from crime dramas. Her character’s spin-off over her ex-boyfriend’s daughter dating him is beautifully played.
She abandons her beloved daughter, turns on an old friend, and even reveals her feelings to her cowardly husband, Daniel (Joel Fry). As Alice loses her job and collapses from daily drinking, Walker manages to keep things as interesting as possible.
A less believable portrayal is the relationship between Steve and Izzy.
British actor Nicola Walker (above) plays Alice.Provided by Lara Cornell/Disney+/
The condition occurs spontaneously one night when divorced Steve is sleeping on Alice’s couch after a mutual friend’s funeral. Izzy returns home after a heartbreaking breakup with her boyfriend.
The two are both emotionally vulnerable and end up sticking together. The text takes pains to make clear that Izzy not only enthusiastically agrees to this, but that she is making the first move, and that she is at the exact age when her prefrontal cortex is fully developed.
But while there may have been some plausibility to this initial coupling on the page, on screen these actors can’t sell it at all. Viewers simply need to understand that not only do two people who spend one night together fall deeply in love, but that neither of them had any prior romantic feelings for each other.
Alice and Steve remain vague regarding any questions you may have. For example, did Izzie ever call Steve “Uncle”? After all, he’s not the friend Alice kept from her children. He attended his family’s Christmas and went on vacation to Portugal with his family.
Daniel, who is not Izzy’s biological father, made these points during an awkward dinner party at a nearby corner store. However, Steve shakes off the idea that he is a groomer, only for the idea to come up again in the context of a social media war between Tom and Jerry and Alice.
The possibility that Izzy and Steve’s relationship is completely incestuous is completely ignored until later episodes, when it’s brought up for shocking laughs.
Woody Allen’s famous predecessor, the comedic director who dated a sort of stepdaughter when he was 56 and she 21, is more clearly featured. During the Trivial Pursuit game, Alice declares to Izzy’s Gen Z friends that Steve is a fan of Allen’s films. Steve, a celebrity hairstylist, defuses the situation by calmly explaining that he has a lot of famous clients, so he knows better than to expect the media to tell the whole story about them.
Alice and Steve invite viewers to feel sophisticated. What can you do? As long as Izzy agrees, you really don’t need to do anything?
The writing is humanitarian, live-or-let-let-live, and much of it is good. The exploration of the pressure points in Alice and Daniel’s marriage is well done, as is Daniel’s emotional relationship with his co-worker.
But, uncle, crying wasn’t enough. I couldn’t get over the disgusting feeling.
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