Sally Rooney’s best selling coming-of-age novel Normal People was a sensation when it came out last year, so you can imagine our excitement when the BBC announced that it would be making its very own TV adaption earlier this year.

Now, the BBC has finally given us a first look at the upcoming 12-part series about the complicated relationship between a young couple, Connell and Marianne (played by newcomers Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones), who embark on a difficult relationship as they finish school and leave their small town in west Ireland for university in Dublin.

In a series of production stills, first shared by Variety, the couple are pictured together in a red-lit room, while in another, Mescal’s Connell is sitting a school exam, and Edgar Jones’s Marianne is seen walking through Trinity College, Dublin.

“In Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal, I feel I have found two young actors who can vividly capture Marianne and Connell and bring alive the profound and beautiful relationship at the centre of the story,” said director Lenny Abrahamson, when casting was announced in May.

“It’s also lovely for me to be shooting in Ireland again and telling an Irish story after shooting abroad.”

Normal People will air on BBC Three and Hulu in early 2020.