If you’re still grieving Marianne and Connell, and the end of last year’s BBC adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People – the sole obsession of lockdown #1 and the springboard that brought Paul Mescal bounding forth into our lives – then have we got news for you.

After it dropped that Rooney’s 2017 debut novel, Conversations with Friends, would also be hitting the small screen, the cast of the BBC and Hulu TV adaptation has finally been announced – and it does not disappoint. American Honey breakout star Sasha Lane, The Favourite actor (and Taylor Swift’s bae) Joe Alwyn, and Girls‘ eternal cool-girl Jemima Kirke are set to star, as well as newcomer Alison Oliver (pal of Paul Mescal, who went to the same drama school as him in Ireland). Kirke will also be joining the cast of season three of Sex Education as the new headmistress.

Like Normal People, Conversations with Friends explores tangled and turbulent relationships, this time of four friends: the book’s narrator Frances (Oliver) and her “self-assured, outspoken and compelling” ex-girlfriend and now best friend Bobbi (Sasha Lane). They are two Dublin students who get involved with a married couple: “handsome but reserved actor” Nick (Alwyn), and Nick’s wife Melissa (Kirke), a writer who is fascinated by Frances and Bobbi.

Conversations with Friends will be a 12-part series, helmed by director Lenny Abrahamson – who also made Normal People – with filming to start later this year.

“Lenny’s deep affinity for Sally’s writing and talent for finding actors to bring her fictional creations to life played a huge part in bringing Normal People so successfully to screen,” explains Piers Wenger, director of BBC Drama. “In casting Alison, Sasha, Joe and Jemima, that same flair and instinct is in evidence and we can’t wait to see how they will bring Frances, Bobbi, Nick and Melissa to life.”