Music as the emotional protagonist in the series that turns nostalgia into storytelling
There are stories that don’t need great artifices to make you feel something deep. All it takes is a guitar, a couple of voices broken by time and that old song that, decades later, still taps into your heart. Mix Tape -the Irish-Australian miniseries released in 2025- is just that: a journey through the songs that marked a life and two people who refuse to let go of each other completely, even though everything around them is broken.
The premise is simple and sharp: Alison and Daniel fall in love in 1989 Sheffield, when post-punk still smelled of pub smoke and mixtapes were the emotional equivalent of a handwritten “I love you”. Years later, separated by continents and wounds that still fester, music is still the bridge that connects them.
The soundtrack as a living memory
The musical catalog of the series is not only setting: it is pure narration. Time Out said it when reviewing its musical selection: alternative hymns of the 80s and 90s work as a bonding motif for the protagonists, an affective DNA impossible to erase.
From the riff of The Stone Roses’ “Fools Gold” marking territory from the first episode, to the inevitable pang of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” in moments where the past hurts more than it should, each track seems written for the scene it occupies.
The soundtrack thus functions as a scrapbook:
- The first heartbeats of teenage love in Sheffield → New Order, The Cure, Nick Drake.
- The jump to the present, more adult, rougher → Angus & Julia Stone, Richard Hawley.
- Absences, what was not said → The Velvet Underground, The Jesus and Mary Chain.
It’s a playlist that beats.
Original score: excitement between scenes
Mix Tape is not all about well-known musical licenses. The series also features an original score composed by Chiara Costanza, released as an album with 15 pieces created to serve as glue between scenes, memories and time jumps.
Without them, the emotional journey would not have the same cohesion. They are musical breaths: small melodic capsules that let a hug, a reproach, a word that does not come out.
Episodes that can be read in song
An ideal detail for music-loving readers: Mix Tape is constructed almost like an album divided into four chapters, where each episode has its own recognizable setlist.
Examples:
- E1: The Stone Roses, Nick Drake, Arctic Monkeys.
- E2: The Fall, The Psychedelic Furs, 1927.
- E3: Joy Division and Frente!’s delicate version of “Bizarre Love Triangle”.
- E4: Rory Gallagher and The Cure hit where it hurts again.
Each chapter sounds different… as are the states of the heart as it grows.
Analog nostalgia in times of playlists
Mix Tape’ s greatest value is in reminding us of something we seemed to have forgotten:
There was a time when passing on a song was passing on a part of you.
Today playlists are shared with a click: immediate, infinite, disposable. But a tape… Ah, a tape was dedication. It was waiting for the song to play on the radio. It was editing the world for someone else.
The series knows it. And it reminds you.
That’s why it works. That’s why it hurts pretty.
Mix Tape is not just a romantic drama. It is a love letter to those who grew up rewinding with a Bic pen. An ode to all those songs that, without asking permission, stayed to live with us. And a reminder: even though time passes, there are melodies that keep finding you.
Because we all have our own mixtape.
We just need to hit play again.
