Alfred Molina

After last week's bombshell, the atmosphere is tense in the Stevenson household. The pair are due to attend an important dinner but Roger's (Alfred Molina) missing front tooth is causing problems while Val (Dawn French) is stressing about her job application for the position of deputy head at her school. Despite the tension, the comedy drama's warmth and homeliness are still evident - just about - along with clever dialogue which will strike chords of familiarity with just about everyone.

"Will you speak normally! There's nobody here!" Val implores her husband tonight.

Which is precisely what I'm usually thinking when I'm watching this series because of the way Alfred Molina keeps using that special "I'm In A Play!" voice some actors are prone to.

And it's a shame when the brilliant dialogue manages to be so naturalistic and yet so utterly eccentric at the same time.

No other series would invest so much energy in thrashing out the perfect guest list for an imaginary party or scrutinising tea towel artwork for some kind of hidden meaning

But unlike shows such as EastEnders, where you're continually bludgeoned over the head with plot, this intriguing series is all about using subtext and undercurrents, a bit like a melody in a song picked out by a bass guitar.

Even casual comments are as loaded with significance as the special saucepans that Val, played by Dawn French, is using tonight to cook a celebratory dinner following Roger's industrial tribunal.

It's a slowly simmering episode but Roger is still nursing a secret that's about to blow the lids right off.

The most common complaint about this gentle, bittersweet comedy about a middle-aged married couple leading a quiet life of domestic dullness is that nothing much happens in it. Curiously, though, that's exactly what its fans consider its chief virtue. Each week writers (and sisters) Beth and Emma Kilcoyne serve up a confection of tragedy-tinged amusements spun entirely from the all-too-recognisable foibles we come to notice over time in ourselves and our partners, the games we play, the delusions we hide behind. That said, by its normal standards, this week's show is packed with incident: an unusually animated Roger (Alfred Molina) arrives home from a long-anticipated employment tribunal, only to have his composure derailed by a doorbell, an email and his subsequent need to make an emotional - and potentially devastating - confession to Val (Dawn French). All this comes against a backdrop of guest lists for imaginary parties, the trials of holidaying in the Scottish Isles, the politics of doodling on tea towels and the sadness that "opening" a new set of cooking pans can induce. Roger and Val may not be to every taste, but for those who love them this is an episode that must not be missed.

Dawn French and Alfred Molina are so cosy and comfortable in their middle-aged domestic rut that this is the televisual equivalent of a slanket.

But, if you have the energy to split hairs about it, Val has just got in while Roger is pottering about at home, psyching himself up for his employment tribunal the following day - and so can't get in from anywhere.

He shouldn't worry, though - just witness the way he manages to take delivery of a totally free Chinese takeaway tonight.

With a shopping system like that, he need never work again.

But Val's arrival turns out to be a major distraction from Roger's fretting, as you'll be asking yourself, "What the hell has she come as?" Cleverly, her look isn't commented on until later.

There's no need, because Roger and Val are a couple who know each other inside out and they have no secrets from each other.

That's what Val thinks anyway, but she'll soon learn otherwise.

The BBC continues to redefine the word 'gentle' with this vaguely amusing, often underwhelming, Mike Leigh-lite comedy. It's impossible to dislike either Alfred Molina or Dawn French, but also difficult to care too much about their characters either, restricted as they are to a narrow and repetitive round of unconvincing sitcom misunderstandings, petty arguments and inevitable reconciliations. This week, Roger prepares for his forthcoming work tribunal by steeping himself in daytime TV legal dramas, while Val dresses up as Mrs Danvers for World Book Day. The show's occasional lapses into genuinely moving melodrama are absent this evening, leaving little to chew on besides a few witty asides and some predictably high-quality acting.

Tensions are high in the run-up to Roger's (Alfred Molina) unfair dismissal tribunal. Especially as Val (Dawn French) has had a tough day too, competing in the World Book Day fancy dress party at school. The big question is: has Roger jinxed his luck by ordering the Celebration Banquet from the Chinese takeaway on the eve of his day in court? A delightfully absurd half hour distilled from drab lives and everyday concerns.

The most startling development as this gentlest of series returns for a second run is that Roger (Alfred Molina) has finally had a proper shave. Ironic, really, as now he's unemployed he could just slob around the house all day in a curry-stained vest if he really felt like it.

But he and Val (Dawn French) have just got in from a wedding, which could go some way to explaining his newfound love for spruceness.

Amid the usual ­inconsequential banter this week about Little Chefs and lamps, we find Roger obsessing about his looming employment tribunal for unfair dismissal, and Val hoping for a shot at becoming deputy head.

Devotees will know better than to expect proper laughs but, amazingly, we actually get one tonight when Val demonstrates how she's preparing for her interview with the help of a cleverly customised cardboard box. You might even be tempted to give it a go yourself.

Alfred Molina and Dawn French are back as the incredibly inactive couple of the title. This week sees Roger and Val returning from a wedding, and much musing on Roger's forthcoming tribunal, and the prospect of a new job for Val. There are in-jokes, debates, reminiscences on anything and everything - except the still-ached-for loss of their baby.

The whole thing is a blatant homage to Alan Bennett's glorious soliloquies of Cream Cracker under the Settee and co, with the silences as telling as the humour, and it's best to go in viewing with that kind of gentle, undulating, un-fireworky telly treat in mind.

Roger & Val Have Just Got In (BBC2) is back for another series. I'm surprised, I have to say. I simply don't get it, though I know it has its admirers. It's a beautifully observed portrait of everyday life and a relationship, they say, poignant and touching. I could switch off the telly and look in the living room mirror for that, I say; I want a bit more from a drama; it's boring. It's well acted by Dawn French and Alfred Molina, they say. OK, they can have that. It's Mike Leigh, they say. It's not, it's Mike Leigh-Lite, Mike Leigh Zero. This has neither the grit nor the humour of Mike Leigh.

Perhaps I'm being old-fashioned, but the dearth of jokes is a slight problem for me - if this is a comedy, as I'm led to believe. It's a sitcom, without the com. It's a sit. Or a sit-through, because rarely has half an hour felt so long.

One Foot In The Grave had a suppressed secret, mentioned only once, that the Meldrews had a child who had died. There is less reticence in Roger & Val Have Just Got In - the sitcom's second series began with a resume which included Roger's tragic observation that he had been a father for "five and a half weeks."

The bereavement is not something they like to discuss much but it does answer the question of why, like so many sitcom couples, they are childless and... we can see with its protagonists obsession with trivia as a form of displacement. It certainly, I felt, informed last night's references to the 'bleakness' of their home, a bleakness that could be offset only by packing away their baggage (Roger & Val had just returned from a wedding) and turning off the overhead lights in favour of kinder lighting.

Emma and Beth Kilcoyne's writing contains wonderful lines that captures the pair's more or less comfortable isolation. Val, looking at The Observer, complained that it was like "15 other people coming into the house all jabbering for my attention." They are all delivered perfectly. Not many people other than Alfred Molina could say, "Rolf Harris doing what he does very well" without sounding idiotic. He is superb, but Dawn French's is the riskier performance. When he gently mocks her hopes of becoming a Deputy Headmistress by citing Bob Marley's I Shot The Sheriff (but I did not shoot the Deputy) she responds by shouting Come On Eileen so aggressively it takes a second to realise she is singing. My only criticism concerns the box-on-Val's-head gags that play to the gallery. There is no gallery. This is BBC Two.