Ava

What Ava is about

Ava has a list of things she cannot stand about Liam, and the list is long. He is loud, he is full of himself, and he has been making fun of her best friend for weeks. That is enough for her to tell him at the gym to leave her alone. He grins. The next day he is there again, on the machine next to hers, asking whether she needs someone to spot her. She says no. She means it, too. Roughly.

Ava is the romance series of this batch that starts with dislike. Liam shows up on the tennis court, later on the beach, always by chance, always with that grin. Across five episodes the series shows how she first wants rid of him, then watches him, and finally notices the list getting shorter. No hotel corridor, no marriage in the background, just two people who cannot stand each other and keep crossing paths. The tension comes from the contradiction between what Ava says and where she looks.

Episode 1, Leave Him Alone, is the row at the gym. You see Ava angry, Liam amused and her friend caught in the middle, who never wanted the row in the first place. By the end of the episode nothing is settled, but he has learned her name. The final episode is called Growing on Me, and that already tells you where this is heading. How she gets there is the fun of it. You know the feeling when someone winds you up and you still keep looking. That is exactly what this series runs on.