Last Tango In Halifax

Last Tango In Halifax was a rather sweet story

Last Tango In Halifax was saddled with several ludicrous sub-plots, but all in all, made for thoroughly watchable television.

TV review: Last Tango In Halifax

Last Tango in Halifax provided more heartwarming proof, if it were needed, that romance and adventure need not be the preserve purely of the wrinkle-free.

Review: Last Tango in Halifax

It triumphed because it wasn't about old people or even elderly romance, but love, says Simon Usborne.

There's nothing too shocking about Last Tango in Halifax, a rather sweet and gentle love story in six parts about two elderly singletons who rekindle their romance from 60 years earlier.

Episode one features an incident of juvenile crime and a car chase, but that is about as racy as things get. Instead, the production wisely concentrates on its two leads, Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid, as they quietly go about their business of acting everyone else off the screen. Nicola Walker and Sarah Lancashire, as the couple's respective grown-up daughters, are provided with substantial subplots of their own, but it will be the incomparable Jacobi and Reid that will draw and hold the audience.

Writer Sally Wainwright has left behind the mean, crime-soaked streets of Manchester and Scott & Bailey to return to the kind of warm-hearted family turmoil she first explored in her hit series At Home with the Braithwaites.

Last Tango in Halifax is a rather sweet love story with, at its heart, an unconsummated romance that reaches back decades. Celia and Alan (Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi, both great) first knew each other as teenagers. But, after a misunderstanding, their burgeoning relationship collapsed and they married other people. Donkey's years later, when they're single once again, the pair re-establish contact through Facebook.

They both have grown-up families now, each member of which has a secret sorrow, or just a secret. There are times when Last Tango in Halifax will make you gasp in disbelief, but because the cast is so good and works so hard to make it all credible, you'll probably be won over.

The titular allusion to Brando, butter and anonymous '70s sex is the worst thing about this new romantic comedy starring Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid. Widowed and in their seventies, a pair of Yorkshire wrinklies reconnect on Facebook having once fancied each other in their teens. Thankfully few obvious gags are made at the expense of these 'silver surfers', with the scenes featuring them messaging each other proving particularly well handled. There's also a canny nod to Jacobi's RSC pedigree when his character Alan Buttershaw quotes Shakespeare in a casual, almost unknowing way. Trying to avoid it becoming As Time Goes By 2.0 though, writer Sally Wainwright puts their respective kids and grandkids through some particularly wild and eyebrow-raising dramas - including lesbian flings among teachers, drunk one-night stands and even the odd unexplained death. It works though, and this first episode nicely sets up a series that could end up becoming an unlikely source of rather cheeky and subversive fun on BBC1.

The ever-wonderful Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi lead this 'it's never too late' love story from writer Sally Wainwright (At Home With the Braithwaites, Scott & Bailey). Celia and Alan fancied each other at school 60 - yes, 60 - years earlier but nothing came of it. Now, thanks to the wonder of Facebook, these silver surfers are back in touch and can finally act on their feelings. That's if they can get over the lifetime of baggage they've got trailing behind, notably grown-up daughters (prim Sarah Lancashire, bolshie Nicola Walker) who have issues of their own.

There are some titles that make my heart sink. Last Tango in Halifax (BBC1) was one of them, because I knew exactly what I was in for from the very start; a light, bitter-sweet rom-com with plenty of outdoor shots of the Yorkshire countryside to draw in the same viewers who lapped up the James Herriot vet tales. With not a hint of butter. And so it proved. Within seconds of their first appearance on screen, every character's life story was pretty much established. The widowed grandparents who used to fancy each other as kids - will they, won't they get together, what do you think? - the struggling grownup children and their dead or feckless partners, and the grandchildren making their way in the world. The only part of the first episode that took me by surprise, was Caroline's (Sarah Lancashire) lesbian dalliance with one of her teachers. Though on reflection, I should probably have seen that one coming, too.

Actually, that wasn't the only surprise. Or the biggest one, which was that despite it all being terribly familiar and predictable, Last Tango was not at all bad. It was the quality of the acting that made the show work. While I couldn't help wondering what Derek Jacobi (Alan) and Anne Reid (Celia) might have done with a more challenging script, I couldn't fault their commitment. It's not that often a pair of 70-year-olds get to take centre stage in a rom-com and they did so with charm, coyness and experience; they even managed to make the ridiculous car chase feel slightly less ridiculous. God knows how.

The rest of the cast weren't so shabby either. Both Nicola Walker (Gillian) and Sarah Lancashire have expressions that can convey a world of pain without saying a word - a distinct advantage here - helpfully glossing over most of the clunkier elements of the plot. So against my expectations, I found myself making a note to watch next week's episode. Even though I have still got a fair idea of exactly what's going to happen.

Last Tango in Halifax, BBC One, review

The ways in which this story of late love might have gone wrong were numerous, but with the help of beautifully nuanced performances from her cast, Sally Wainwright steered an entertaining course between the Scylla of sentimental regret and the Charybdis of patronising caricature.

Last Tango in Halifax, BBC One

Bertolucci meets Alan Bennett in Sally Wainwright's gentle generation game.