Francesca Delbanco makes comedies about grown-ups whose old friendships give them permission to behave badly. We like her ear for affection turning awkward; the broader antics are less persuasive than the conversations.
Fi1m perspective
In Platonic (2023), an old friend can encourage precisely the habits that everyone else has asked a person to abandon. Francesca Delbanco and co-writer Nicholas Stoller understand how little distance there is between an affectionate exchange and an uncomfortable one. Sylvia and Will indulge each other, and their dialogue makes the attachment understandable even when their behaviour begins to wear. This is where we find Delbanco most convincing: letting a friendship remain appealing while showing why other people might reasonably want it kept under control.
Her television work began with Stoller on Friends from College (2017–2019), about Harvard alumni in their forties still entangled in old friendships. She co-created and wrote the series, directing one episode. Her responsibilities on Platonic include co-creating, writing, showrunning and directing multiple episodes. The move from a group of former classmates to a friendship between a married woman and a newly divorced man gives the later programme a more concentrated subject. Both concern educated adults whose experience has not made their personal lives much easier.
Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen make that narrower focus worthwhile, particularly when Sylvia and Will get on each other’s nerves. We warmed to Platonic because those sharp, affectionate exchanges make it possible to understand the friends without approving of their conduct. Delbanco’s work with Stoller gives both actors enough in the dialogue to make the closeness persuasive, even when the friends are encouraging each other’s worst habits. We would be wary of crediting her alone for that balance: the shared writing and the performances are central to what works.
The broader antics are less rewarding, partly because Platonic repeats them, and its supporting characters cannot quite compete with the central pair. That matters in comedy about friendship: if the other people seem thin, it becomes too easy to take the friends’ side. We would welcome more attention to those supporting characters, whose company might make the central friendship look rather less necessary. Start with Platonic for Byrne and Rogen irritating each other, and allow for some repetition when the comedy gets broader.
Biography
Francesca Delbanco is an American screenwriter, novelist and director. She co-created and wrote the Netflix comedy series Friends from College (2017–2019) with her husband Nicholas Stoller, and the Apple TV+ series Platonic (2023–present), on which she also serves as director and executive producer.
Delbanco grew up in Bennington, Vermont, the daughter of writers and Bennington College faculty members Nicholas Delbanco and Elena Greenhouse. She graduated from Harvard College and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan. Before entering television, she worked at Seventeen magazine and published the novel Ask Me Anything in 2004.
Delbanco and Stoller, whom she married in 2005, frequently collaborate; they met at a Harvard alumni playwriting workshop and live in Los Angeles with their children.
