If you watch Hulu and Disney+’s Alice and Steve without the synopsis, you might think it’s a cozy BFF series. But it quickly turns into a dark British comedy that’s a sharp, character-driven ‘wrong‑com,’ exploring messy relationships and what happens when loved ones do unforgivable wrongs. The first season is a cringe masterclass ending with a bang.
The series opens by beautifully establishing the deep, unbreakable, 300‑month platonic bond between Alice (Nicola Walker) and her eccentric, divorced best friend Steve (Jemaine Clement), a high-profile celebrity hairstylist. Their dynamic is effortless until Alice’s 26‑year‑old daughter, Izzy (Yali Topol Margalith), moves back into the family home following a painful, messy breakup with her long-term boyfriend, Janis.
Steve, who has been drowning in deep loneliness and openly longing for a nuclear family of his own, unexpectedly crosses paths with Izzy. What starts as a brief, weirdly charged interaction in the kitchen quickly spirals into a secret, passionate tryst. The ultimate twist drops at the very end of the premiere: a deeply conflicted Izzy stands in the living room and tells a completely horrified, frozen Alice that she and Steve just slept together.
Rather than treating the hookup as a catastrophic, one-time mistake, Steve and Izzy double down, moving their new relationship forward at absolute breakneck speed. The choice leaves a bitter, isolated Alice cut off from her two favorite people, forcing her into a cycle of maternal fury and cringe-inducing reactions.
Hoping to maintain some semblance of control over her collapsing world, Alice hosts an excruciatingly awkward dinner party for the new couple and Izzy’s twenty‑something friends. The evening descends into disaster as a passive‑aggressive Alice hurls snide remarks, embarrassing childhood stories, and overt social hostility at her former best friend.
The situation hits a permanent, unskippable checkpoint when Izzy discovers she is pregnant. Even though the child is biologically her ex-boyfriend Janis's, Steve makes the executive decision to stay with Izzy and raise the baby as his own, immediately fast‑tracking a shotgun engagement to cement his dream family.
The tension of the entire season culminates in the finale at a swanky rural manor where the extended family gathers for a rapid‑fire wedding‑rehearsal weekend.
During a group clay‑shooting activity on the lawn, an unhinged, deeply stressed Alice literally stalks Steve across the grass with a loaded shotgun. She points the weapon directly at his chest when the rest of the party turns their backs, then smoothly gaslights him the second he tries to scream to Izzy that her mother is actively trying to assassinate him.
Between the family warfare and her raging pregnancy hormones, Izzy spirals into a severe panic attack. Realizing she is rushing into a lifetime commitment with an older man she barely knows, Izzy secretly texts her ex, Janis, to alert him about the wedding.
The match is officially thrown into the powder keg at the formal rehearsal dinner. As Steve stands up to deliver a heartfelt, emotional speech, Alice completely nukes the evening by casually dropping a fabricated bombshell. Smiling through her wine glass, she jokes to the guests that Izzy is actually Steve’s biological daughter from a brief, forgotten fling they shared decades ago.
While the gross incest claim is entirely false, Alice achieves her exact twisted goal: she freezes the entire room and proves that everyone present—even for a single split second—believed Steve was genuinely capable of crossing that line.
The season closes in absolute, jaw‑dropping chaos as Izzy’s ex-boyfriend Janis suddenly walks through the doors and straight into the middle of the ruined dinner party. The screen cuts to black with the future of the wedding, the baby, and Alice’s entire family completely fractured.
Alice and Steve Season 1 succeeds wildly because it refuses to play it safe, opting instead to mine absolute gold from the most uncomfortable social situations imaginable. Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement are outstanding together as Alice and Steve. Clement plays the lonely, well‑meaning but oblivious eccentric to perfection, while Walker is a tour de force, navigating the raw, heartbreaking emotions of a betrayed mother with razor‑sharp comedic timing. Watching Alice go through the stages of grief while her daughter dates her childhood best friend is as hilarious as it is profoundly hard to watch. The show walks that thin line beautifully, making you laugh while simultaneously making you want to hide behind a couch cushion. Ending the season on such a massive, chaotic cliffhanger is a brilliant narrative move, though it leaves fans in a stressful limbo given that there is currently no official word on a Season 2 or Part 2 pickup.
Overall, I give this season one an 8.5/10.
Have you seen Hulu’s Alice And Steve? What did you think of it? Leave a comment.
You can catch Alice and Steve on Hulu.
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