Rye Lane: Dom and Yas’ fake first-date story gets the spotlight
A Disney+ UK clip revisits Dom and Yas’ invented first-date story, offering a way into the mismatched pair at the heart of the south London romcom.
The short answer: A Disney+ UK clip revisits Dom and Yas’ invented first-date story, offering a way into the mismatched pair at the heart of the south London romcom.
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A first-date story needn’t be true to deserve an audience. Disney+ UK has shared a Rye Lane clip centred on Dom and Yas’ fake first-date story, putting David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah’s characters back in the spotlight. Published on 19 October 2026, the video revisits the 2023 romantic comedy.
The film begins somewhere rather less romantic: an art gallery toilet. Dom, a young accountant, is crying over his ex when Yas overhears him. They meet again at the exhibition, then head out into Peckham and Brixton. Both are dealing with broken relationships, and their walk brings encounters with past loves and acquaintances as they begin to learn about each other.
The attraction starts with a mismatch. Dom tends to follow the rules, while Yas brings eccentricity and a disarming curiosity. An invented dating story is an inviting hook for this particular pair: the film brings two very different temperaments together through the shared experience of heartbreak.
Finding Dom and Yas
Viewers may recognise Jonsson from Industry and Oparah from the Doctor Who spin-off Class. For Rye Lane, their collaboration had an appropriately dating-themed start: an early chemistry read involved improvising the creation of an online dating profile, as recounted in Screen’s interview with Oparah.
Allen-Miller wanted Yas to be funny in her own right, without the pressure to remain polished all the time. Oparah welcomed the room to play someone with problems of her own:
I enjoyed being a character that is allowed to be messy and have things to sort out. Vivian Oparah
A different London love story
The neighbourhoods matter to that approach, too. The story was originally set in Camden, but director Raine Allen-Miller moved it south, drawing on her connection to Brixton and Peckham. She told the BFI she wanted to write a love letter to south London. Production designer Anna Rhodes described choosing real locations where these characters would spend time, making the area part of their story rather than an interchangeable backdrop.
Written by Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia, Rye Lane marked Allen-Miller’s feature directorial debut and premiered at Sundance in 2023.
Rye Lane is available to stream on Disney+ in the UK.