Sometimes, out of the wilds of the hunt for IP, the right creative team can scavenge something nearly original. Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel, High Fidelity, about a record store owner whose collector’s impulse extends beyond his albums to an ever-growing inventory of personal heartbreaks, already received the cinematic treatment in 2000, with John Cusack in the role of Rob Fleming, the story’s central forlorn romantic. Re-introducing Hornby’s vinylphile on this side of the digital and streaming divide is such an unlikely and surprising choice that it actually works.
The film updated the book’s location from London to Chicago. Now, the Hulu show has updated that location once again, to Brooklyn. Rob is no longer short for Robert, but for Robyn, and this Rob is played by Zoe Kravitz. For those who only know Kravitz from her one-dimensionally aloof character on the first season of Big Little Lies or from her one-dimensionally distraught character on the second season of Big Little Lies, the many shades of Zoe are a joy to discover. In trendy Fleabag fashion, Rob spends a generous amount of time on the near side of the fourth wall, clueing the viewers in on her emotional landscape. Like her High Fidelity forebears, her preferred method of emoting is the top five list, and counting down her top five break-ups provides the embryonic structure for the series, just as it did the book and the film before…
