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Platonic, Apple TV+ review: modern spin on When Harry Met Sally isn’t as funny as it thinks

Seth Rogen and Rose Byne in Platonic - Apple
Seth Rogen and Rose Byne in Platonic - Apple

The comparisons between new Apple TV+ comedy Platonic and When Harry Met Sally are so obvious – it’s about the relationship between two fast-talking friends, one male and one female, who have known each other for decades – that the script references it within the first 15 minutes. Except the fun in Nora Ephron’s film came from the will-they-won’t-they between Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. In Platonic, the leads really are just friends. Without the prospect of romance, what exactly is it?

Well, it’s a sitcom with echoes of Seth Rogen’s 2007 film, Knocked Up. Will and Sylvia (Rogen and Rose Byrne) are former bosom buddies who fell out years ago when Sylvia said she didn’t like the woman Will was about to marry. They reconnect after Will’s marriage ends, and goof around as they rediscover the kind of fun they had as twentysomethings, before work (him) and family (her) began taking up all of their time.

Rogen plays the same sort of schlubby guy as his character in Knocked Up, only now he has a job running a hipster brewery and he wears very bad outfits. Sylvia is a former lawyer, now a bored stay-at-home mother. She is at that stage of life where she can’t quite believe she’s in her forties while displaying all the signs of reaching her forties, like going to a bar and being annoyed that the music is loud and there’s nowhere to sit.

There is potential here. Set pieces can be enjoyably silly, and some of the comedy is nicely-observed, as when Sylvia shows Will a picture of her kids during their strained first meet-up and instead of faking interest he says: “Well… there they are.”

But mostly the writing feels too smug. Will has a little rant at the idea that women are the mellower sex: “Margaret Thatcher, she was a f---ing a--hole. That Cara Delevingne, she seems like a f---ing mess.” The aimless dialogue only serves to highlight that the plot is going nowhere, and that these two find themselves far more hilarious than we do. The line between endearing and obnoxious is quite fine.

And then there’s the inconvenient truth. “Men and women don’t really hang out together at our age,” Sylvia tells her husband. But I can’t help feeling that the reason Will likes having Sylvia for a best friend is because she’s as gorgeous as Rose Byrne.