Alfred Molina

Alfred Molina and Dawn French slip back into the comfy shoes of oddly harmonious couple Roger and Val in the comedy that wryly ponders the minutiae of daily life. They've just got in from a weekend at a hotel. In between learning about their exploits, we're treated to a spectacle featuring three remarkable women: Martina Navratilova, Hillary Clinton and Margaret The Apprentice Mountford.

Fix yourself a plate of fish fingers and a glass of wine: the Stevensons are back. Not that anyone will notice much: when this quietly brilliant comic-drama about the minutiae of a marriage ran in 2010 it caused barely a ripple, but those of us who loved it, loved it.

If you're coming to it fresh, don't expect Terry and June. The inspirations are nearer Mike Leigh or Alan Bennett: closely-observed human foibles with a vein of tragedy just below the surface. Val (Dawn French) is a cookery teacher. Roger (Alfred Molina) was a horticulturalist until he lost his job. Buried in their past - but ever present - is the memory of a child who died as a baby.

Tonight they're just back from a wedding, and we follow the usual niggles and shared jokes, their views on old songs, the correct timing of meals, Sunday papers, and the best way to unpack. Roger is haunted by the prospect of his employment tribunal while Val might be up for the deputy headship. It's that kind of show.

The one-set, two-actors formula is unchanged and the pleasure undiminished in the second series of a show for which the term 'sitcom' seems ever less appropriate. Alfred Molina and Dawn French's married couple aren't especially funny, but they are acutely recognisable, and the dialogue, setting and studied on-screen naturalism (a couple of hammy moments excepted) lend it a sort of sub-Beckettian weight. Although series one implied that Roger and Val had addressed their long-buried grief over their deceased baby, a wedding, a job interview and a dismissal hearing expose further emotional faultlines amid the idle banter about ageing, loo hygiene and the etiquette of unpacking. An intriguing, ambiguous cliffhanger bodes well.

The second series of this bleak comedy has been a long time coming, as if the BBC were as ambivalent as audiences and critics after its August 2010 debut. However, this warm and subtly funny two-hander has much to recommend it. Played out in real time, it follows the titular married couple as they return home and discuss their day, and its cleverness is how their discourse about minutiae cannily shows us their true feelings. It's gently revelatory, with no bursting into tears or laying down the law, which is refreshing in itself. Alfred Molina and Dawn French are faultless as neurotic botanist Roger and fretful teacher Val, with French dialling down her comedy persona to render her a believeable suburban matron. Long-marrieds will relate ruefully to their endless gentle bickering - tonight, upon returning home from a family wedding, Val harps on about Roger's ill-timed use of a hotel bathroom that prevented her enjoying the complimentary bath oils. If at times Emma and Beth Kilcoyne's script veers towards insipidness, the piece is unique and well-acted enough to get away with it. Tonight's first of eight episodes sees Roger and Val's comfortable universe disrupted by the arrival of an important letter.

Alfred Molina and Dawn French return as the "lovable" Roger and Val in this oddly antiseptic two-hander. It must be the script that so drains the charm from their relationship, because it's not the actors. Direction and dialogue manage to create a chilly vacuum between audience and characters. No one talks like this: a husband and wife almost never address each other by name, but these two never stop Val-ing and Roger-ing. So to speak.

Fans of understated comedy will be delighted by the return of Roger & Val Have Just Got In, in which Alfred Molina and Dawn French trade tender blows as a childless middle-aged couple dealing with the minutiae and enormity of everyday existence.

As before, each slow-burning episode consists of a digressive exchange between the pair as they rattle around their careworn house, with the viewer cast as a silent eavesdropper gradually assembling the details of their unseen outside lives.

And though I'm loath to describe it as a gentle comedy - so often a pejorative euphemism - it really is apt in this case. Humour and pathos arise naturally from the comfortable eccentricities of its endearing protagonists, whose unwavering love and support of each other makes for a refreshing change from the usual antagonism of sitcom marriages.

And yet despite that, there's nothing cosy about Roger & Val..., as an underlying sense of impending tragedy is never far from the surface. Indeed, in its own quiet way, it's one of the most ambitious comedies on TV, almost like the anti-Mrs Brown's Boys.

There's a recent trend for things to be well-made and performed but not funny - The Cafe seemed to just forget the jokes while Cricklewood Greats didn't seem to think they were weighty enough to include. Some people have been somewhat unfairly adding RAVHJGI into this bracket. Somewhat unfairly because, really, it's a sitcom that's not supposed to be funny. It is after all based around a couple who have never got over the death of their baby. The eye for detail in the dialogue and performances is what makes the show, little spaces, hints and drops. While you can appreciate the fact that Dawn French reins it in at all, Alfred Molina is brilliant.

This gem from last year was executive produced by Hugo Blick, the man behind BBC2's mighty thriller The Shadow Line. However, if you come to Roger and Val expecting dark violence and crushing suspense, you'll be terribly disappointed. It's more like Blick's previous series Marion & Geoff or Sensitive Skin, a muted, micro-observed domestic drama that has enough funny and absurd moments to qualify as sitcom, even if that tag feels all wrong. Alfred Molina and Dawn French are superb as a devoted but prickly married couple with a tragedy in their past that only emerges via hints over the course of the series. The plotting is understated, to put it mildly (tonight's opener is taken up with hunting for the guarantee for a broken vacuum cleaner), but also sweet, funny and very sad. If you missed it first time round, record the whole series - you won't regret it.

Radio Times review

Half an hour in real time, in the house of a middle-aged couple (Alfred Molina and Dawn French) who have Just Got In from work. No scenes outside. No other characters. Few traditional "jokes". Is that the recipe for the year's best sitcom? Yes, because comedy is character and these characters were exquisite.

With writers Emma and Beth Kilcoyne having nailed the peculiar rhythms and catchphrases of long-term cohabitants, almost everything this melancholy but sweetly supportive pair said could raise a low-key, warm titter.

But the series wasn't content with being a perfectly observed micro-comedy about marriage. As that melancholy took over, and Val and Roger's charming vulnerability assumed a darker, more dramatic hue, we learnt that they were bound together not just by domestic convenience, but by grief. The searingly sad fourth episode, where the nature of that loss was revealed, was the best half-hour of telly of 2010 in any genre.

The first thing we see tonight is the notice next to the front door. "Roger have you got: phone, wallet, house keys, bin bag, diary . . ." it reads. Has this always been there, or is it a side-effect of the momentous events of last week? Either way, things have changed in the house where our touching, multi-layered domestic drama has unfolded over the past weeks, and they come to a head tonight. Roger feels Val has been melodramatic over their recent ructions, not something you could accuse the series of. Only by a gentle drip-feed of hints have we gathered the extent of Roger and Val's hidden stresses, dealing with a current bereavement and with reminders of an old but terrible one. As usual, Dawn French and Alfred Molina play it to perfection.