Love And Marriage (2013)

The final episode of this amiable comedy drama is nicely bittersweet, and we are left with the feeling that life in the Paradise family will continue to be turbulent, long after the credits have rolled. But, though it's been a good-natured six weeks, I'm not sure I want to see any more. Sometimes, you know, things just end and that's fine.

Pauline Paradise (Alison Steadman) continues to carve a new life away from her dull, lugubrious husband Ken (Duncan Preston). He, in turn, decides he must move on and takes steps to get rid of all traces of his estranged wife, which doesn't go down well with the rest of the family. Meanwhile, horrible, self-obsessed Heather confides her big secret in her nearest and dearest. Uh-oh.

This week, the Paradise family have further animated chats in brightly lit rooms, nearly always resulting in someone doing or saying something accompanied by perkily plucked violins. Despite all of them being superb actors at the top of their profession, it doesn't hang together. Any script that needs frequent cutaways to a character explaining their motivations to an unseen interviewer isn't doing its job. A queer, old-fashioned clunker of a thing. Tonight, Rowan fears losing Scarlett after a row about Emma.

We learn more about the unconventional relationship between the poised, self-possessed Rowan and her married lover Tommy (Celia Imrie and Larry Lamb) as Stewart Harcourt's likeable family drama continues. Their love is tested by a family crisis, when Rowan's troubled granddaughter decides she must track down her mother. None of this runs particularly deep, but Love and Marriage rolls along nicely, and Imrie and Lamb are an engaging couple.

As a family barbecue and camping trip unfold, all of the Paradises get together for a party. It's a noisy occasion, but truths emerge as their various family lives begin to take divergent paths.

Graeme Hawley interview

Graeme Hawley couldn't wait to play an ordinary dad in his latest role - because he has spent so much time killing people on screen.

A toe-curling date was the centrepiece of Love And Marriage, when retired lollipop lady Pauline (Alison Steadman) went for a drink and a movie with widowed teacher Peter (Bruce Alexander).

We know that Pauline is a dating novice - she's only been out with one man, and she's been married to him for 40 years. But last week she left him, and moved in with her flighty sister (Celia Imrie), who really should have explained some dating basics. Such as, if your hubby phones you during the date, don't answer. And if you do answer, don't have a blazing row. And if you do have a blazing row, remember that your date can hear everything you're saying about him.

The show is fragmenting into a collection of sketches, starring energetic but two-dimensional characters. The most interesting is daughter Heather (Niky Wardley), boiling with jealousy if her younger husband even speaks to another woman.

There's a sort of charm about Pauline's car-mad husband Ken, too. When Heather tells him she's just seen her mum being whisked off for her date in Peter's flashy E-Type Jaguar, Ken looks torn between feeling hurt and being impressed. 'E-Type? What year?' he asks.

Pauline's sister is thoroughly dislikable - the sort of shallow, brittle schemer that Imrie plays so well. Envious for decades of her sibling's happy marriage, she's delighted to help break it up. 'You've left a world of pain, not a man,' she assures Pauline.

This is the sort of comedy-drama that signals its 60-something characters are Being Free and Living Life, by having them blow up a space hopper and bounce round the living room. But like Dates [Channel 4's drama], it needs to start tying its story strands together.

Love And Marriage is a new comedy-drama on ITV which, in that very ITV way, pinches from other shows. The characters - members of the extended Paradise family - sit on sofas and talk directly to the camera about themselves and their aspirations. You'll remember this from Modern Family. Very soon, there's an opportunity for some golden-oldies, grab-it-before-you-end-up-potted-heid romance. You'll remember this from Last Tango In Halifax. All of this is almost shameless even though Love And Marriage doesn't actually steal from Shameless. I wouldn't mind if it brought something new to the busy kitchen table of interwoven laughter-and-tears clan sagas, but I'm not sure it does.

It's a show of over-enthusiastic pub quizzes, congas starting in the conservatory and continuing right round the garden and christenings with the middle name "Beyoncé". Alison Steadman is the always-giving matriarch Pauline with a batty father, a husband who barely communicates, a son always borrowing money - and a free-spirit sister who's acquired almost as many husbands as her house has bedrooms (seven). Thus, when Pauline retires as a school ­lollipop lady, she ­decides: "Stuff the lot of you." She may not be back and ­neither might I.

New comedy-drama Love and Marriage starred Alison Steadman as newly retired lollipop lady Pauline. We knew that Pauline was put upon because she was laden down with carrier bags, which also worked as metaphor for her bustling, self-absorbed extended family (including Extras' Ashley Jensen).

Pauline's husband, "Silent Ken" (Duncan Preston), had a face like a wet Wednesday and the conversational skills of undercoat. When he refused to comfort Pauline after her father died, nobody would have blamed her for lunging at him with her lollipop. Instead, Pauline became one of those "silver splitters" beloved of the Daily Mail, leaving Ken to live with her free-spirited sister (Celia Imrie), and declaring: "I'm not going to be a daughter or a wife or a mother any more." There's an audience for the likes of Love and Marriage, but it verged on meandering and urgently needs to pep up. I was left with the feeling that I'd been watching a stellar cast making ham sandwiches for an hour.

"Secrets in a marriage are like dry rot in a house," opines newly retired lollipop lady Pauline Paradise (Alison Steadman) to an off-screen interviewer. Her husband Ken (Duncan Preston), slumped beside her on the sofa in a near-permanent state of catatonic disengagement, concurs.

As do the rest of the extended Paradise family, their homes visited in turn by this shamelessly contrived but extremely convenient narrative device, which throws into stark relief the shared veneer of domestic contentment with the cauldron of deceit, disappointment and dissatisfaction bubbling beneath.

There is - you guessed it - trouble in the Paradises, and ITV's new comedy drama Love and Marriage will be here over the next six weeks to chronicle it.

There were an awful lot of Paradises to introduce, with an awful lot of back stories to establish, so episode one was rather obliged to sacrifice subtlety on the altar of exposition.

When characters weren't sharing information with the camera they were frequently to be found telling each other things they already knew - "You were a top model in the 1970s" - for the benefit of viewers at home. During the first 20 minutes, the top-rate cast waded heroically through a mud slide of explanatory dialogue, with the threat of submersion beneath a wave of audience impatience never more than a line away.

Shortly after the first ad break, however, they hit dry land. The storylines kicked in, the dialogue came alive - "She keeps saying my name as if she's never heard it before and doesn't like the sound of it" - and proceedings began to gather a satisfying pace.

The Paradise clan, we learnt, are beset by a multitude of problems - financial, emotional, domestic, professional, romantic, historic - which they look to matriarch Pauline to either solve or shoulder.

Following the accidental death of her father, the much-put-upon Pauline reassesses her life and rejects all the roles imposed upon her. To everyone's amazement, including her own, she ups sticks, moves in with her racy younger sister and starts telephoning potential new suitors at two o'clock in the morning.

Despite its remorselessly jaunty soundtrack, Love and Marriage explored some sombre themes and was all the more interesting for it. Steadman's performance drives the drama, but she has excellent support from a stellar cast that also includes Ashley Jensen, Larry Lamb and Celia Imrie.

If not quite hooked, I shall stick with the series, if only to find out why the Paradise family's quiz team didn't get a point for correctly identifying The Constant Gardener as Rachel Weisz's Oscar-winning vehicle.

Love And Marriage could be destined for divorce

It takes some skill to switch from comedy to tragedy in the blink of an eye. You could see what Love And Marriage (ITV) was going for in killing off its cuddly grandad Frank by having him fall out of a hammock but, as with the rest of this odd mishmash of a hundred other shows (Stella, The Syndicate, Last Tango In Halifax), the moment was fatally misjudged. It was plain offensive.

Last night's viewing: Love and Marriage, ITV

Love and Marriage doesn't always seem to be able to distinguish between pretend pain - which you can use to animate a narrative - and the real thing, which can't be fixed with a heartfelt speech and a few tears. It may get better, but it needs to.