Starstruck season three review: BBC Three romcom starring Rose Matafeo

Nikesh Patel and Rose Matafeo in Starstruck

(Image credit: BBC/Avalon UK/Shamil Tanna)

published 7 September 2023

“I was nervous” about watching the third season of the BBC Three romcom “Starstruck”, because I so enjoyed the first two, said Deborah Ross in The Mail on Sunday. I needn’t have worried: “it’s witty and warm and terrific, all over again”. “The premise, essentially, is ‘Notting Hill’ in reverse.” The romance is between Tom (Nikesh Patel), a film star, and Jessie (Rose Matafeo), a New Zealand expat who has a dead-end job at a London cinema.

At the end of the last season, they got together; at the start of this one, the “happy-ever-after” we assume had been theirs comes unstuck in a montage showing them squabbling, sulking and finally splitting up. Jessie finds a new love interest in the form of an electrician (Lorne MacFadyen) who can match her for banter; but is it really all over with Tom? Written by Matafeo and Alice Snedden, “Starstruck” cleverly “both embraces and subverts Richard Curtis tropes”, and it rests on Matafeo’s performance, which is so charismatic you forgive Jessie her many flaws.

The show suffered a bit of second-season “script floppiness”, said Barbara Ellen in The Observer. But the writing is much “sharper” now and there are some great cameos – Minnie Driver returns as Tom’s agent and John Simm pops up as a “pretentious über-thesp”. It remains, in all, “a slow-burn treat”. A “low commitment, timewise”, the show provides good returns, said Pierra Willix in Metro. Heartwarming but not saccharine, it delivers “laugh-out-loud moments” – and you always wish the episodes were a bit longer.