This clever drama about a 27-year relationship is full of slow, steady reveals that are sparse and deeply affecting. The actors’ rich, detailed performances will welcome you in
, suggests that this will be about finding wry humour in the mundane reality of a long-term relationship. Emma and Ian talk about dodgy tummies and who will pick up the parcel that has been left with a nextdoor neighbour. They watch TV and tease each other about the state of their pants. There’s nothing wrong with the mundane, as Golaszewski’s previous shows have proved again and again. Plenty of people tune in to watch Gogglebox every week, and that’s just us watching people watching telly.
The light touch is deceptive, though, and Marriage soon reveals that it won’t quite be the gentle series it first appears. All the characters in the couple’s lives talk to each other in cliches and platitudes. They stick to the script of human communication, politely indulging in small talk, while hardly ever daring to say what they truly mean. Emma has an oddly excruciating chat with her younger, smarmy boss Jamie about what a risk it is to buy clothes online.
There are long stretches of action without dialogue, and the show is as allergic to exposition as it is to characters finishing their sentences. As Emma visits her elderly father, a man sitting with him hides upstairs – we don’t yet know who he is. Emma’s father is frosty, then accusatory, and in a single line we understand what is happening in their relationship, and the role that Ian has to play.
Of course, this requires a lot of trust in the writing, and the storytelling. You have to hold out your hand and be willing to be led, believing that it will take you somewhere you want to go. Bean taps into some of that pain, pushed down and away, that he performed so memorably in. Even the small details here are rich. When he goes to the gym, the younger men give up their weights for him and call him “Sir”. It is a neat show of how old he must feel, and how surprised he is to feel it.
There is a lot of dithering, and a lot of keeping difficult conversations at arm’s length. This can be frustrating. It is an hour long, and you feel it. The tension it whips up – in Emma’s place of work, or in Ian’s lonely wandering, or at dinner with Jess’s creepy and controlling partner – can be genuinely unpleasant to sit through. But that is the point. This is all about the light and shade, the big and the small moments, what makes a marriage work and the cracks that can appear in it.
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