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.

Video: Dawn French reveals weight loss secrets

Dawn French, talking to BBC Breakfast, reveals that she has lost weight since shooting the second series of Roger and Val Have Just Got In.

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.