‘Leonard and Hungry Paul’ seeks to succeed with kindness and normality: “We wanted a series hug”

Perhaps the only secret of Leonard and Hungry Paul is that it precisely does not tell anything special or scandalous. This Irish series, which premiered this Tuesday on Filmin after triumphing on BBC, is simply the story of two introverted friends in their late twenties who enjoy sharing board games. A few weeks ago, its director Andrew Young told EL PAÍS that his goal was simply “to create a hug series,” because it is in its simplicity that it lays its foundations. It all boils down to the fact that in 2026 being kind is almost a political attitude. “It is a calm and kind television series, the opposite of what is mostly made now, where everyone asks for something gripping, something more dramatic, and more conflict,” shares the filmmaker from his home in London.

Its protagonists, actors Alex Lawther (Leonard), Laurie Kynaston (Hungry Paul), and Jamie-Lee O’Donnell (Shelley, the girl in the equation) recall to EL PAÍS via videoconference that the narration had so little external conflict that it was even difficult for them to summarize the project when asked about it: “I said it was about two friends who play and have conversations about how to expand their life. But I liked that simplicity, because in the Western world we usually don’t have stories empty of conflict; since it is usually the engine. We talked about what we liked about Perfect Days, by Wim Wenders. And in the end, it is nice to see how that everyday life has captivated the audience. Because in reality, they do have internal conflict. They are not comatose. It is their routine,” explains the first, who had previously played shy and awkward characters in The End of the F***ing World and Alien: Planet Earth.

‘Leonard and Hungry Paul’ seeks to succeed with kindness and normality: “We wanted a series hug” — Alex Lawther and Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, in an image from the series ‘Leonard and Hungry Paul’.Cait Fahey

But, in reality, although there are no “car chases or bank robberies,” as his colleague points out, there are conflicts narrated with a certain dark humor. Leonard’s mother dies, and he must learn to live alone while he meets a coworker with her own personal baggage and adult life problems. Paul, for his part, tries a new job and wants to show the world that it is possible to live peacefully in silence, without it being uncomfortable or unpleasant. Because staying quiet is also a defiant attitude in the present. “Introverted people don’t make the headlines, but they are there. The shouting tends to win,” notes Lawther.

Before getting into the characters, they all read the novel by Rónán Hession on which the series is based to better enter the minds of their protagonists and avoid the prejudices that may arise, because, as Andrew Young explains, the writer never, for example, labels his protagonists as autistic: “He never wrote with that in mind, but if the viewer wants to draw that conclusion, that’s fine. We didn’t want to push any discourse or have the whole series be about that. It is in the hands of the viewer and how they decide to interpret the performance.” Kynaston also delves into the fact that “although there is a preconception about someone who is not sociable, who takes life at a different pace and plays board games,” they wanted to “show that Paul is very calm with everything he does and is not going to apologize. He is happy with the path he has chosen, loves his family and friends… it is very nice to talk about those kinds of characters, usually without focus.”

This goal reminds the viewer of kind series like The Durrells or All Creatures Great and Small, but its tonal proposal is also formal: “They are normal and quiet people, but it is made with a certain exaggerated and magical touch. And we wanted to tell everything without fuss,” explains the director, who opted for a warm color palette no longer so common on television, looking, for example, at Spike Jonze’s film Her. “The challenge was to find a balance to not be too cheesy or a children’s series. Maintaining that feeling, and not falling into exaggerated humor either, was walking a very fine line. But I loved the challenge of having to think differently: they usually say that if comedy is fast, it is 15% funnier, but ours was about being slow and thoughtful, something that may not seem ideal for comedy,” he explains.

“Although there is an emotional relationship with different positions, no one is the bad guy. Leonard and Hungry Paul is about growing up and navigating life. It is about a mood and things we don’t usually celebrate,” explains the filmmaker, who acknowledges that this genre of “slow TV” was not “easy to sell and summarize.”

Fortunately, they had another perfect marketing point: the narrator in its original version is a star like Julia Roberts, whose presence was in this project before anyone else. “The publisher told us that she had written years ago to tell them she was a fan of the book and wanted to talk to the author. We thought it was a very nice gesture that someone like her would write a thank-you letter, and we thought… what if she were our narrator? First, we recorded it with my voice for the edit, and in post-production, we did all the work with agents. It was a very small series, so it was a hassle, but after a few months, we managed to reach her, and she immediately responded to confirm she would love to,” explains Young, who then traveled to San Francisco to record the lines with Roberts. “She asked me what we wanted from her. And I simply told her: imagine you are on a sofa and lean back a little to normally tell me what happens in this series. She understood immediately,” he explains. And so they managed to bring a Hollywood star closer to the anecdotal normality of their Irish series.