If I Never Met You

If I Never Met You centers on Laurie Watkinson, a thirty-six-year-old lawyer at a Manchester firm whose eighteen-year relationship collapses when her partner Dan announces he's not ready to settle down — only to reveal soon after that he's expecting a baby with a new girlfriend, Meghan. Blindsided and humiliated, Laurie is stuck working alongside Dan at the same firm while trying to hold herself together.

A chance encounter in a stuck elevator throws her together with Jamie Carter, the office's reputed playboy, who doesn't believe in love but needs a respectable, stable-looking girlfriend to impress the partners. Laurie, meanwhile, wants a visible new relationship to give the office gossip mill something else to talk about. They strike a deal: a fake relationship, mutually beneficial, strictly business.

Mhairi McFarlane plays the fake-relationship premise for both comedy and genuine emotional stakes, as Laurie and Jamie's arranged performance starts generating feelings neither of them planned for or quite knows how to name.