Hulu’s High Fideli­ty is a musi­cal med­i­ta­tion on (self-)love

In line with the obvi­ous and vague hues of nos­tal­gia that have enveloped some of the most pop­u­lar big and small-screen titles in recent years, Hulu’s High Fideli­ty takes us back – at least musi­cal­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly. Vinyl records may have made a come­back, but there’s still some­thing oth­er­world­ly about an old-school record shop in this day and age. Replete with care­ful­ly curat­ed crates and unco­or­di­nat­ed, musi­cal­ly-themed posters lin­ing plain walls, the dim yet warm atmos­phere of a non-pre­ten­tious record shop feels immersed in a dif­fer­ent era. A strange­ly famil­iar space, in a gen­tri­fied set­ting that is slow­ly cov­er­ing up any rem­nants of its past – includ­ing its music.

These are the kinds of con­ver­sa­tions Rob (Zoë Kravitz) and her best friends/​employees Simon (David H Holmes) and Cherise (Da’Vine Joy Ran­dolph) lose them­selves in for hours on end. They do so with mount­ing snob­bish­ness and the right­eous­ness to assume a seraph­ic pow­er over music his­to­ry, eras­ing those artists they no longer deem wor­thy of sales (Michael Jack­son) and cling­ing on to the heroes of their past (David Bowie).

Based on Nick Hornby’s 1995 nov­el of the same name, which saw John Cusack in the lead role of Stephen Frears’ film adap­ta­tion, this 10-part reimag­in­ing is every bit as pleas­ing – espe­cial­ly if you hap­pen to get a kick out of every non-Mil­len­ni­al music ref­er­ence. It does, how­ev­er, lack the awk­ward­ness and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that is present in both the book and orig­i­nal movie.

This is not to say that the per­for­mances suf­fer. High Fideli­ty sim­ply tells a dif­fer­ent sto­ry now, from the female per­spec­tive, in a con­tem­po­rary set­ting, with new music (from Grapetooth to Le1f) and old feel­ings (cour­tesy of Sinead O’Connor’s ​‘Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U’). Sparked by yet anoth­er failed rela­tion­ship – round­ing up Rob’s Top Five Heart­breaks – she reflects on her own inad­e­qua­cies. It sets her off on a mis­sion, a musi­cal med­i­ta­tion on past and cur­rent rela­tion­ships, her own short­com­ings and inse­cu­ri­ties, and her rela­tion­ship with her­self. While Kravitz always brings authen­tic­i­ty to her char­ac­ters, in this case it is per­haps too much.

Even if you’re new to the sto­ry, the series looks and feels ​‘cool­er’ than it actu­al­ly is. Rob is the kind of woman most men want to be with, and most women envy for her unflap­pable atti­tude. When she does man­age to out­run her prob­lems, her exits are invari­ably badass (if a lit­tle cow­ard­ly). Her wal­low­ing next to a metic­u­lous­ly organ­ised record col­lec­tion in a charm­ing­ly mis­matched apart­ment, the smoke from her cig­a­rette lin­ger­ing like the mem­o­ries of past lovers, feels unerot­i­cal­ly sen­su­al. Her sad­ness is con­spic­u­ous­ly fem­i­nine – at times soft and gen­tle like Darondo’s soul ses­sions, at times moody like The Cir­cle Jerks or hope­ful in the warm light of Nick Drake’s ​‘Pink Moon’. In this sense, High Fideli­ty feels sep­a­rat­ed from its cen­tral character.

There’s a DeWan­da Wise, She’s Got­ta Have It vibe to Kravitz’s on-screen per­sona that would work if only she weren’t Rob; if she had more free­dom to explore a char­ac­ter oth­er than that which Horn­by intend­ed. Even through her hurt, she seems far too self-aware and com­fort­able in her faults to be ques­tion­ing her­self and her choic­es in love. She per­fect­ly under­stands the theme of the show’s playlist – ​“What you like is more impor­tant than what you are like” – and could have found her clos­er in as lit­tle as five episodes.