Derek Jacobi

Last Tango In Halifax, episode four, review

The superb acting skills of Derek Jacobi lifted the latest episode of Last Tango in Halifax, says Michael Hogan.

By the end of the episode you'll probably be so overwhelmed by some big poignant moments involving Derek Jacobi that you'll have to be helped up the stairs to bed. Make sure there's someone to plump your pillows and take care of you, you're going to need it, as Alan (Jacobi) comes to terms with loss. Jacobi is so heartbreakingly good it's hard not to stand back, nod sagely and say to yourself, yep, that's acting, proper acting, all while you're having a good old cry.

Absence is very much a theme as Caroline (Sarah Lancashire) embarks on her weekend with girlfriend Kate (Nina Sosanya), a mini-break that proves unexpectedly lonely when Caroline has a failure of nerve. They meet the old friend who Kate wants to sire her child, and he's a self-centred, garrulous bore.

Poor Alan and Celia. Getting married secretly without telling their families is meant to be "just a bit of fun," say the hapless, happy couple. But their rash romanticism falls on stony ground as chippy, glum Gillian sees it as a betrayal. Oh, Gillian. It's tempting to yell at her, "Why don't you just cheer up, love?" but she has much to be anguished about. She thinks her lovely dad's common sense-filled head has been corrupted by his new association with sinfully bourgeois Harrogate, and her son delivers an emotional torpedo that threatens to blow up that gloomy family farmhouse on the moors.

It's another carefully calibrated episode of Sally Wainwright's smashing drama, as her characters push the frontiers of their lives into new and uncharted territories. For Alan and Celia (Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid), Gillian and Caroline (Nicola Walker and Sarah Lancashire) so much is about to change....

It's been a thinnish week for drama but Last Tango in Halifax, Sally Wainwright's almost sugar-free romance about two pensioners - former lovestruck teenagers reunited by Facebook after 60 years - was back for a second series having won the nation's affection and a Bafta last time out.

We found the pair almost as we left them, with the excellent Derek Jacobi as Alan, recovering from a heart attack brought on by their hasty quarrel about the desirability of lesbianism in Harrogate and perhaps one too many respiratory struggles with glottal northernisms (the downfall of many a thespian). Much has been made of this septuagenarian double act, and Jacobi and Anne Reid, a natural as Celia, shone even when they were just gazing over t'moors and talking about dead people.

It would be a gentler story, though, without the complications whipped up by their clashing daughters - Gillian (Nicola Walker), a widowed single mum and grubby farmer with an impulsive sex drive, and freshly outed Caroline (Sarah Lancashire), snooty head teacher of a school that sings Jerusalem every morning - each conscious, amid declarations of love and alarm bells at the realisation that old people have minds of their own, of festering parental disapproval that recent events could only aggravate.

With Caroline's dalliance with a junior female colleague out in the open, it was Gillian's turn to stir the pot with revelations of a drunken shag with Caroline's multi-philandering husband John (a wonderfully furtive Tony Gardner). I couldn't say whether this was more transgressive than Gillian's earlier eye-opener - seeing her carrying on (Yorkshire for sexual intercourse) with a lad young enough to be her son from the local filling station - but it had Derek Jacobi shaking his head. "You pillock," he said, a word that wasn't quite equal to his disappointment (he was thinking of the shame she had brought upon the house as a pregnant 15-year-old), but served to draw a line under the affair before he had another heart attack. In the end we left the lovebirds understandably sloping off to the register office for a deserved quiet wedding. But will they get it? Tune in Tuesday.

Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid return in Sally Wainwright's simply excellent family saga. Celia is overjoyed when Alan regains consciousness after the heart attack. And for a brief moment it's all happy families as both clans unite over the good news. But soon, Gillian purges her guilt over her night with John and the foundations quake anew. Every moment feels like truth thanks to a script so tightly woven you could strain tea through it. Such acting, such writing; it's as near to perfect television as you can get.

Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid resume their touching romance as mature lovebirds Alan and Celia for a second season of laughter and tears. Having narrowly cheated death last time out, Alan has a renewed zest for life and, apart from a spot of rock climbing, what he really, really, wants to do is be married to Celia - and the sooner the better. As for daughters Gillian and Caroline, the near-fatal crisis appears to have brought the families closer together. But the honeymoon period hits turbulence when Caroline's wastrel ex John enters the scene and complex emotions bubble to the surface. Nicola Walker, Sarah Lancashire and Tony Gardner co-star.

At the end of the first series of Sally Wainwright's winning, warm-hearted drama, dear Alan was hovering between life and death after a heart attack. Obviously he survives, or there wouldn't be much point in returning to Yorkshire for a second helping.

It's great to see everyone again in a drama where pensioners are loved, cherished and never dismissed as inconvenient, and this time the masterly Wainwright has broadened the drama to dig deeper into other characters, notably Caroline (Sarah Lancashire, who's excellent) the newly-confident and newly out lesbian. While Alan and Celia (Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid) mend the relationship that almost fractured for ever, there's a shift in the tectonic plates in the romantic lives of their families. Just look at poor Gillian (Nicola Walker), who is made to pay for her terrible mistake in sleeping with John (Tony Gardner), Caroline's pathologically hopeless estranged husband. No one does bleating wretchedness like Gardner - no one.

Last year's first series of Last Tango was both a surprise hit and proof that the BBC wasn't entirely comprised of sneering ageists. The familial drama - centred around a pair of septuagenarian lovebirds - has reportedly even been snapped up by Diane Keaton with a view to an American remake.

We've got two pieces of advice for Diane, should she be reading. Firstly, don't try and cast Woody Allen to play opposite you, cute though it may sound on paper. Secondly, if you reach a second series, don't start it on quite such a sombre note as this new run begins on. Whereas the first series began with the joys of new-found love (and the lols of seeing oldies on Facebook), we reconvene tonight after Alan's (Derek Jacobi) heart attack.

If that wasn't enough of a bummer, the delicate romantic entanglements of the pair's respective offspring make for a slightly confusing 15 minutes. Yet, despite the absence of any initial sugar-coating, Last Tango thankfully remains as charming and well played as ever.

Last Tango in Halifax, BBC1, episode 1, series 2 review

Last Tango in Halifax with Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid is a welcome and unmissable returnee to our wintry TV schedules.

Interview: Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid

Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid are perfectly in step, whether smashing stereotypes or snuggling up with Daniel Craig.