Dash & Lily (2020)

Dash & Lily opens with a premise that sounds like a rom-com pitch from 2009: a Christmas-hating cynic named Dash finds a red notebook in the Strand Bookstore, stuffed with dares and a note from a girl named Lily who believes, with unironic conviction, that New York in December is magic. He picks up a pen. She picks up the notebook. They fall for each other through writing before they ever share a room. It should be corny. Sometimes it is corny. But it works.

The 8-episode Netflix miniseries, which premiered on November 10, 2020, was adapted by Joe Tracz from the 2010 YA novel "Dash and Lily's Book of Dares" by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. The show stars Austin Abrams as Dash and Midori Francis as Lily, two teenagers who couldn't be designed more differently. Dash quotes Salinger and finds Christmas commercially obscene. Lily decorates everything in her sight and regards strangers as friends she hasn't met yet. The show's central argument is that both of them are right, and both of them are annoying about it.

What Dash & Lily Gets Right About Christmas in New York

The show earns its Christmas credentials through location in a way that most holiday content doesn't bother with. This was filmed on location entirely in New York, from October 14 to December 11, 2019, and you can feel it. The Strand Bookstore appears not as a generic "quirky bookshop" but as the actual Strand, 828 Broadway, with its 18 miles of books and its particular chaotic energy. Dyker Heights in Brooklyn, where real New Yorkers go to gawk at the most extravagant Christmas light displays in the city, gets a proper scene. Grand Central Terminal shows up in its actual December state, decorated and crowded and slightly overwhelming.

This matters because Christmas-in-New-York is usually a lie. Most productions shoot in Toronto or Atlanta and add stock footage of Rockefeller Center. Dash & Lily shoots at Rockefeller Center. The difference in texture is real.

The show is also honest about what New York at Christmas actually costs emotionally. It's loud, it's crowded, it's full of tourists, and the magic requires effort to find. Dash knows this and uses it as an excuse to disengage. Lily knows this and considers finding the magic the point. The notebook dare structure forces Dash out of his curated misanthropy and into the city's actual chaos, which is where the better version of him lives.

The Cast: Two Actors Who Figured Each Other Out

Austin Abrams was well-known to teen drama audiences before Dash & Lily from "Euphoria" and "Paper Towns," but this is a different register. Dash is a harder character than he looks. He needs to be sympathetic while being genuinely unpleasant at times. Abrams threads this reasonably well, though the show occasionally lets him off the hook too easily for behavior that Lily would be skewered for if genders were reversed.

Midori Francis as Lily is the real discovery. She plays a character who could easily read as naive or irritating, but Francis gives Lily specific intelligence and specific vulnerabilities. The performance understands that enthusiasm is not the same as stupidity, and that someone who believes in Christmas magic can still be perceptive about the people around her.

The supporting cast does solid work. Dante Brown as Dash's best friend Boomer and Troy Iwata as Lily's older brother Langston both get storylines that matter, which is more than YA adaptations usually bother with. Langston's relationship in particular is handled without the condescending sensitivity that these stories sometimes deploy.

The Jonas Brothers, Nick Jonas, and a Tequila Conversation

The finale involves the Jonas Brothers performing at an outdoor New Year's Eve concert at Hudson Yards, and Nick Jonas individually appearing in a trailer to give Dash romantic advice while referencing his own marriage proposal to Priyanka Chopra. This sounds insane written down, and it is slightly insane on screen. But Nick Jonas is also an executive producer on the series through his company Image 32, and the whole sequence reportedly came together in a 15-minute backstage conversation between executive producer Shawn Levy and Jonas at the Hollywood Bowl, fueled by tequila. It's the most chaotic piece of a generally un-chaotic show, and it's hard to be annoyed by it.

Is Dash & Lily Worth Watching?

The show was canceled after one season in October 2021, which means the notebook dares end where they end and no sequel is coming. For a story structured around correspondence and deferred meetings, the single-season format is actually fine. The arc completes. The eight episodes don't overstay.

What the show does well: genuine location work, a central conceit that rewards attention, two leads who build real chemistry despite spending most of the series apart, and an honest depiction of what it feels like to be the kind of person who loves Christmas too much in a city that is trying to sell Christmas back to you at significant markup.

What it does less well: Dash's redemption arc moves a little faster than his actual behavior warrants, some of the dare sequences stretch credulity, and the pacing in the middle episodes gets uneven. The show is better when it trusts the notebook and weaker when it fills time with supporting-character subplots that go nowhere.

Still, for Christmas-in-New-York content, it sits well above average. The Strand Bookstore scenes alone are worth the 8 episodes.