Last Tango In Halifax

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....

Celia and Alan have opted for a modest wedding ceremony. Just the pair of them and two witnesses (a butcher and a copper) they've picked up on the street. 'We thought everyone would think it was funny,' explains Alan. Sadly, they don't. Gillian, in particular, seems mortally wounded by this turn of events.

But that's not all - a jarringly sudden plot development involving Raff and his on-off girlfriend throws everything into flux, but could constitute this hitherto perfectly judged show's first real narrative mis-step. Still, the real strengths of Last Tango in Halifax - the performances and the characterisation - remain intact.

This is a strikingly mature TV drama, not just in terms of its main protagonists but in its more minor moments too. This is illustrated perfectly by a lengthy two-hander between Caroline and Kate: a conversation which feels nuanced, believable and adult in the best possible sense.

Last Tango in Halifax, series two, episode two, review

The second series of the BBC's hit comedy drama, featuring Alan and Celia's wedding, continues to impress.

Nicola Walker shines in another brilliant instalment

Nicola Walker was the star of the episode in my opinion as she totally made you feel for Gillian throughout the course of the story.

Last Tango in Halifax shows that the old deserve a star

I hope it will soon become the norm for the old to be part of the mainstream of daily life.

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.

Last Tango in Halifax - TV review

After the pounding melodrama of Ripper Street and Peaky Blinders, a drama that lets its dialogue breathe is an absolute joy.

TV review - Last Tango in Halifax, BBC1

Don't be fooled by the cardigans and tea, there's nowt twee about this drama.

Last Tango In Halifax loses its rhythm

While Last Tango In Halifax is still beautifully acted, with moments of sharp truth, there were moments on its return when it was dancing too fast for its own good.

Review - Last Tango in Halifax, series two

Sally Wainwright's story of septuagenarian love continues with quietly smouldering passion.