Being single in the middle of a pandemic is a bit like going to school and failing a grade. Everyone around you has either moved on with matrimony or coupled with the nearest cutie they had access to. Worse, if you believed in a spectrum outside of monogamy, and generally took it easy with hookups and sex, I can confirm, this dread has been real. Chances are, that this sense of loneliness intensified for you, especially if you’re not coupled. Unlike the hickeys, this sense of doom and loneliness does not pass over time and disappear. The recovery and the healing process is a bit like a wound on your knee. It stays and the scab of being lonely continuously itches even while you’re indulging yourself in some mindless hobby.

Watching Home for Christmas (2019-2020; dir- Per-Olav Sørensen) is basically feeling that fear come to life. It’ll make you want to pick that scab of loneliness and scratch it cause that’s how raw and real it is, especially in the middle of this godawful pandemic. I felt deeply connected to Johanne, the central character of this light-hearted romantic comedy, that will never go on to become an Emily in Paris (and thank the Lord for that).

A TV show comes to be a hit or flop, not just with the creative liberties taken by the creators or the team, but also with its timing and how it resonates with the viewer who is streaming it. Collectively then, the masses ought to appreciate or trash it, for its fate to seal in the final stage of its conception—the audience review.

It took two Christmases and a whole pandemic for me to be acquainted with Home for Christmas; a Norwegian TV show with six hours of screen time, divided between two seasons in the gap of one year. It’s something you can easily stream on a weekend, without pressurizing yourself to cancel plans. Think of this as choosing between this day-long show here or Gangs of Wasseypur (2012; dir Anurag Kashyap) series. On second thoughts, strike that, you can’t. They are like apples and oranges and you must consume both in equal measure. Perhaps one on a Saturday and the other on a Sunday?

Home for Christmas is familiar in many ways, kinda like listening to a friend talk about their misery. Johanne (Ida Elise Broche) is a nurse in her early 30s, single at large. Everyone around her is coupled, from the onesie set which comes in a pack of two, and the twin toddlers she is made to share the Advent dinner table with, at her parents’ during Christmas. The world around her moves in twos and god forbid if you're single, you tumble down a spiral of single hell hole along with her.

That’s truly what makes the show fun, little details sprinkled all over in the production design and writing, along with carrying hooks that have a way of pulling you out a slumber, which is often reserved for the romantic comedy genre. All without enticing you with ridiculously good looking dudes hovering around the protagonist. This is the case with real-life too. If you are single and on the lookout, how often do you find yourself sitting next to a charming, good looking dude in a flight? My point exactly.

Imagine, a screenplay where a character is a whole person without adding two or more hot and talented dudes to the mix, to highlight her dilemma. Imagine someone actually making a rom-com series without the sole focus on the woman to obtain that man. Wow.

Home for Christmas in many ways resembles the Bridget Jones series and yet distinguishes from it. The biggest difference is Johanne’s search for an eligible man that transcends through the dating app culture, wherein she is forced outside of her comfort zone to meet people, which deserves a piece in itself. There’s speed dating, dating app multiverse, people at work, and her support bubble chilling at the bar with her and even just by herself—all sorts of stuff is covered, which is almost how most single people find themselves immersed in this day and age. Not just finding yourself in a torrid affair with your hot boss (who is invariably as good looking as Hugh Grant, blergh). It's also a pretty fucking real version of what happens when you choose those options for yourself, whether it's finding yourself with men forcing you to try adventure sports or Escape Room, Johanne's hell is ours.

Unlike Madam Jones' life, this one is slightly relatable (how I despise that word courtesy content creators). She works a job with shifts, she lives with a single flatmate, and even though she can’t really cook to save her life, she’s not being a hot mess on the regular and has a grip on her to handle her friends, family, and patients under duress. The funny thing is, Johanne has her act together, other than the solitary Christmas work party event. You have gotta watch out for that if you’re single and attempting to sow your wild oats. It’s a primer on what not to do if you’re dating and single in a small city, even in Delhi.

The trouble with continuing to use Bridget Jones as a cultural icon for single women in our times is that she was committed to making mistakes. On the other hand, Johanne is committed to fixing things, and that’s a relief to see it play out. This is almost emblematic of the journey women on screen have undertaken in the last two decades, especially if they were shown to be single past 25 and adding to the line of romantic comedy genre of television/films. With Johanne in Home for Christmas, women are no longer just looked like caricatures of pathetic spinsters who can’t get a thing right without a man, and the man himself has to look a minimum of Hugh Grant, and nothing else.

The women here are aware of their circumstances, would call back for a date just to orgasm even if it’s with an 18-year-old teenager off a dating app, and basically know how to call the shots when they're newly single (by peeing at the shack of your ex-boyfriend’s latest hookup’s business). Home for Christmas respects the agency of the single woman. It does not pull classic Bridget Jones sort of shit by putting any man or woman in the spotlight for our protagonist to pick from or lust for, thus allowing her a space to be her own person without the forceful addition of how she needs another person. 

At no point do you feel like supporting one of the many people you’re introduced in the first season, not because they’re all shitty, but because the protagonist herself finds at odds to pick someone from the bag of who’s less shitty, but also cause she’s on a path of self-discovery on who she is and what does she really want. This moves over two seasons, even when she does start dating one of the many suitors.

Johanne’s character is every bit relatable, normal, and utterly in despair, courtesy of the circumstances she finds herself in. Very single in the city without a pandemic to distract you (I’m presuming there’s no Covid in this world despite cause there’s a clown that works at the hospital with Johanne who’s there to cheer people and also nobody wears a mask). She gets sucked into work situations she'd rather not be in, just cause she's empathetic, a trait lost on most number-crunchers and people in power. She's attractive and yet doesn't get picked by men, not unless it's one Christmas party where she chooses to focus on herself.

In that sense, you can sit through the whole show and feel like you’re listening to a friend talk, as opposed to a work of fiction. Johanne has overbearing siblings, parents at the crux of ending their marriage, more nieces and nephews than she can count, and no fucking option to date a single, respectable dude who is worth her time, despite there being so many and then the constant reminders to find someone from the options.

Johanne's situation in the show is a reminder. The flipside of being single in your 30s is awaiting interruption from coupled friends, their partners, your extended family members, and others. Johanne goes through it all, in fact, that’s the painful pilot, which is so far removed from the rest of the show, that the creators had to dedicate a whole episode to that ilk. Everyone around her is somehow obsessed with the fact that she’s single and in her 30s, and thus she needs to get her act together and get with it. This hit home as it triggered my memories of friends' partners and others who have often been intrusive with, "we need to get you married to a good guy".

Go fuck your own life, mate.

While Holidays may be over and the doom of pandemic in some sense may have lifted since people have been called back to work in most places in India, Home for Christmas is a watch beyond the festival itself. If not for the joy of being uncoupled and unbothered, watch it for the shits and giggles and feel better about how it affects everyone, whether it’s Johanne or you, halfway across the world. Being single may not be the worst thing, it means being in Johanne's company.

More such characters, please?

(You can stream Home for Christmas on Netflix.)

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