Sarah Lancashire

Radio Times review

The scope widened in series two of the Bafta-winning romantic drama, with as much screen time devoted to family strife as to pensionable lovers Alan and Celia's late-blooming courtship. Not that this is in any way a problem - in fact we now care just as much for the younger adults as we do for the recently reunited sweethearts. The key is the wit and wisdom that runs through Sally Wainwright's scripts, all subtly performed by such stars as Sarah Lancashire and the peerless Nicola Walker, the latter of whom was a picture of anguish for most of the run.

Though Alan and Celia are the twin heartbeats of Last Tango, in many ways this series has been about the flourishing of another relationship, the one between their daughters Caroline and Gillian.

Last week's episode was pivotal for the women when, in vino veritas, spiky, defensive Gillian (Nicola Walker) revealed a very dark episode from her past to an unwitting Caroline (Sarah Lancashire). Tonight, in the last instalment of the series, the pair emerge from a foggy alcoholic night to take stock.

But don't run away with the idea that it's all grim. There is a wedding to organise as Alan and Celia (Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi) renew their vows on a snowy Christmas Eve. It's a lovely occasion and writer Sally Wainwright, with her gift for putting her finger exactly on a drama's emotional pulse, brings us an occasion to cherish.

Sarah Lancashire and Nicola Walker shine

I found this to be a thoroughly satisfying instalment of a series that's had its ups and downs.

Awkwardness and confusion abound as Caroline (Sarah Lancashire) and Kate's romantic country weekend doesn't pan out quite as intended, John's designs on Gillian turn into a busy night down on the farm and Alan and Celia fret over skeletons in the closet. The plot of this engaging saga doesn't so much advance as entertainingly whirl round in circles - with a spot of teen bondage threatening to send Celia (Anne Reid) over the edge.

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.

Sarah Lancashire shines in an uneven instalment

In my recent reviews of Last Tango in Halifax, I've made much of the changing tone of a series which I believe has become a lot darker in its second run. But, in the last ten minutes of tonight's episode, I got the sense that the storm clouds were lifting.

Too many people give too much away in Sally Wainwright's masterly drama, as Last Tango in Halifax takes some very dark turns. Emotional scabs that have never healed are ripped away by unwitting hands and the families at the heart of the drama pulse with the pain of open wounds. Celia (Anne Reid) inadvertently, though very thoughtlessly (and typically, as Reid told RT recently, because Celia is not a very nice woman), throws light on a bleak corner in the grim farm on the hill that illuminates a past sadness.

Soon relationships start to sunder under the pressure of exposed secrets and long-buried lies. Even that absolutely gorgeous house in Harrogate (oh, that kitchen! Those gardens!) is quietly starting to foment when it appears that lovers Caroline and Kate (Sarah Lancashire and Nina Sosanya) might want very different things, and a moment of tenderness sparks a crisis.

This is why housework is a mugs' game. If Gillian hadn't been hoovering she'd never have found the appointment card for her dad's secret wedding to Celia. And she wouldn't now be speeding to the register office demanding to know why she wasn't invited.

Even though she doesn't know the real reason for Alan and Celia's haste in tying the knot, Gillian is forced to admit later that she may have over-reacted.

For Celia's daughter Caroline (Sarah Lancashire) her best laid plans are also threatened when her girlfriend Kate throws a massive spanner into the works.

While you're sympathetic to Caroline and Kate's feelings, I can't help thinking that they shouldn't be having all these intense heart to hearts in the middle of school assembly.

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.