Sophie Goodhart is persuasive about the hurt behind bad behaviour, especially when old friends know how to wound each other. We trust her dialogue more than her plotting, which can hurry past people who need fuller attention.
Fi1m perspective
In Alice and Steve (2026), Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement sound like friends who have stopped being careful with each other. Then they begin choosing their cruelties. Sophie Goodhart’s writing gives their exchanges enough shared history to make the quarrel matter, even when the premise feels contrived. As creator and writer, she is good at showing how affection persists during an ugly argument. We winced because the insults seem aimed at someone whose weak spots have been learnt over years.
Her short My Blind Brother (2003) became her feature debut, My Blind Brother (2016), before she moved into television writing. On Laurie Nunn’s Sex Education (2019), Goodhart wrote three episodes of the first series and later directed two in the second. She continued writing through series four. Its early balance of filthy jokes and kindness suits the sort of relationship comedy she writes. We preferred its first two series, before the programme began to sprawl.
Her writing credit on Rivals (2024) puts her within another ensemble programme that enjoys adult misbehaviour. We recommended its comic excess, with a reservation about crowded plotting. Neither that pleasure nor that fault belongs to one writer by default. Alice and Steve, the first series she created, gives us firmer grounds for judging what she chooses to put at the centre.
Here, Steve’s relationship with Alice’s daughter starts the feud, but the friendship receives more attention than the romance. Yali Topol Margalith’s Izzy is too thinly written for the importance of her choices. Goodhart gives us reasons to recognise Alice’s hurt without giving us enough of Izzy’s wishes to distinguish maternal concern from possessiveness. That matters in an age-gap story: we are asked to judge a relationship we have only partly been allowed to understand.
Across its six episodes, the revenge also leaves too little room for the tender passages. Walker and Clement make Goodhart’s sharper lines sound addressed to each other rather than delivered to an audience; the series is worth following for that uneasy familiarity. We would like her to leave these people with the consequences a little longer before setting off the next quarrel. Try Alice and Steve for Walker and Clement, provided a comedy about friends making each other miserable appeals.
Biography
Sophie Goodhart is a British writer, director and producer. She wrote seven episodes of the Netflix series Sex Education (2019–2021) and directed two episodes of the second series. She also wrote the feature film My Blind Brother (2016), which she directed, and an earlier short film of the same name (2003).
Goodhart has written episodes of The Baby (2022), Boat Story (2023) and Rivals (2024). She created and wrote the Disney+ comedy series Alice and Steve (2026), in which she is also credited as executive producer. Additional writing credits include episodes of Slow Horses (2026).
