Dawn French

Dawn French and Alfred Molina star in this downbeat new sitcom. As the title suggests, it's about a couple pottering around at home in the first half-hour after work, winding down, putting the kettle on, thinking about death, that sort of thing: Beckett with a nice biscuit. Tonight's opener revolves around a missing vacuum cleaner receipt, legal issues at work and the threat of the Big Drawer.

This is a strange new comedy series. It depicts a middle-aged couple during the half-hour after they get in from work. Dawn French plays Val, a waddling teacher of "food technology" whose level of expertise is not so much Auguste Escoffier as King Alfred. Her devoted, slightly simple botanist husband Roger is played by Alfred Molina - more often seen in Hollywood blockbusters than chamber comedy these days - who manfully wrestles with a succession of trite homilies and telegraphed gags in his role.

Shot vérité style and in real time, drained of colour and canned laughter, the programme attempts to underpin its gentle observational humour with the pathos of childless marriage, but only occasionally succeeds. Too often the dialogue, in its desire to appear simultaneously portentous and amusing, instead falls in the gap between funny and moving.

Written by twin sisters Emma and Beth Kilcoyne, Roger and Val... in some ways exemplifies the great BBC quandary: how do you remind the public that their £145.50 a year is not being entirely wasted on executives, while also making them laugh and all the while continuing to employ Dawn French? Head of Comedy Mark Freeland has conceded that "not everyone will get it". I fear that unless you've sweated out long nights hoping that Marion and Geoff would breed with The Vicar of Dibley, you'll fall into the "not everyone" camp.

Notionally a sitcom, this series defies easy categorisation. It's not funny, though its portrait of a comfortably long marriage may provoke the odd smile of recognition, and it's not particularly substantial. It is, though, rather sweet. Alfred Molina and Dawn French are Roger and Val, a devoted, mildly chaotic couple whose complete familiarity with each other's personality tics and traits means they're happily at ease as they chat about the day's events. Nothing happens. The first episode centres on Val's determination to find the guarantee for a broken vacuum cleaner, which leads them both to reminisce as they sort through the accretions of married life - the aged bills, bank statements and holiday souvenirs. As they do so, we glimpse snippets of their personalities. Roger is a febrile, nervy pedant, while Val is a worrier. They both want to rebel, even in tiny ways, but they can't summon the energy. Molina and French make it work; in lesser hands it would just fizzle away.

This gentle comedy has been bouncing around the schedules for months, but has finally landed on Friday nights. Starring Dawn French and Alfred Molina as a comfortably-married middle-aged couple it's far from laugh-out-loud, but an entertaining insight into long-term relationships; we're hoping it's a grower.

We've long looked forward to this Dawn French and Alfred Molina sitcom and it doesn't disappoint. Roger and Val Stevenson are an ordinary middle-aged husband and wife whose lives, feelings and prejudices are revealed in splendid little snapshots as they obsess over mundane, everyday minutiae. In this series opener they've lost the guarantee to their vacuum cleaner, which prompts Val to think deeply about existence and the afterlife, and engage in her own form of corporate protest.

If you liked Rev, you might also enjoy Roger and Val - another comedy whose selling point is that it's not trying to be funny.

To be honest, I don't know why the BBC doesn't admit this is a drama and be done with it. Even Dawn French, who stars in it and whose idea it was, has described it as "a tragedy". Perhaps they're trying to hook passing Vicar Of Dibley fans.

It's a two-hander with French and Alfred Molina as a comfortably married couple. We spend half an hour with them in real time, at the point when they have just got in from work and are catching up with one another. And watching it is like eavesdropping on old friends as they natter away about nothing much in particular.

Tonight, they are looking for the guarantee for their vacuum cleaner. Inevitably, as they search through the clutter of their lives, some painful personal issues surface as well.

Ever thought those utterly mundane events that clutter up our day-to-day existence would make compelling subjects for a hilarious new sitcom? Do you find yourself bent double with laughter when you spend 10 minutes looking for your car keys only to discover they were in your pocket all along? Do you split your sides every time you forget to tell the milkman you're going on holiday for a fortnight? Clearly quite a few people at the BBC do.

As you may have gleaned from the title, the action in this new sitcom centres round the thrilling half-hour when Roger (Alfred Molina) and Val (Dawn French) return home from work. The central plot of last night's opener was a broken vacuum cleaner and a missing receipt, all of which led to a tiresome 10 minutes of the couple rifling through the contents of their "big drawer" and musing about all manner of subjects like death, door knockers and two-for-one Specsavers vouchers.

Roger and Val are the only cast members, giving the whole thing something of the feel of a night out at a provincial theatre. Worst of all was the self-consciously "real" script that practically tripped over itself in a bid to reel off the banalities of everyday life in a smug middle-class home. The overall effect came across like a Harold Pinter-scripted episode of Terry & June - although that's probably a little too flattering.

Roger & Val Have Just Got In doubtless thinks of itself as a "bittersweet comedy" by default, thanks to its lack of laughter track and the fact the action plays out in real time. They'd be onto something if either Roger or Val were in any way likeable or amusing. If you're looking to get your kicks by guffawing at banal bickering, it's probably best to stick to The Royle Family, which does this sort of thing so much better.

Beth Kilcoyne: Roger and Val Have Just Got In

Nearly three years ago a card dropped through my door and when I had read it I started running round my house, screaming. This is because the card was from Dawn French, who had seen a comedy written by me and my sister Emma and it invited us to go to a meeting with her.

Dawn's new comedy partner: Roger and Val

If Dawn French's recent marriage breakdown is affecting her, she's hiding it well behind that famously wide smile and flirtatious giggle. The brave face is especially admirable given that she's promoting her new project, Roger And Val Have Just Got In, a two-person comedy which explores the intricacies of a marriage.

French and Molina on Roger and Val Have Just Got In

Dawn French and Alfred Molina star in a new BBC sitcom about 'the hardest thing in the world': being happily married. James Rampton reports.