Dawn French

Dawn French wants putting into fireworks when she dies

Funny girl Dawn French wants to be blasted into the sky in a firework display after she dies.

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.

Dawn French on 'Roger & Val Have Just Got In'

Dawn French talks to Viv Groskopf about BBC Two's Roger & Val Have Just Got In, the break-up of her marriage and being photographed in Ann Summers.

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 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.

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.