Roger & Val Have Just Got In

Video: Dawn French reveals weight loss secrets

Dawn French, talking to BBC Breakfast, reveals that she has lost weight since shooting the second series of Roger and Val Have Just Got In.

The second series of this bleak comedy has been a long time coming, as if the BBC were as ambivalent as audiences and critics after its August 2010 debut. However, this warm and subtly funny two-hander has much to recommend it. Played out in real time, it follows the titular married couple as they return home and discuss their day, and its cleverness is how their discourse about minutiae cannily shows us their true feelings. It's gently revelatory, with no bursting into tears or laying down the law, which is refreshing in itself. Alfred Molina and Dawn French are faultless as neurotic botanist Roger and fretful teacher Val, with French dialling down her comedy persona to render her a believeable suburban matron. Long-marrieds will relate ruefully to their endless gentle bickering - tonight, upon returning home from a family wedding, Val harps on about Roger's ill-timed use of a hotel bathroom that prevented her enjoying the complimentary bath oils. If at times Emma and Beth Kilcoyne's script veers towards insipidness, the piece is unique and well-acted enough to get away with it. Tonight's first of eight episodes sees Roger and Val's comfortable universe disrupted by the arrival of an important letter.

Alfred Molina and Dawn French return as the "lovable" Roger and Val in this oddly antiseptic two-hander. It must be the script that so drains the charm from their relationship, because it's not the actors. Direction and dialogue manage to create a chilly vacuum between audience and characters. No one talks like this: a husband and wife almost never address each other by name, but these two never stop Val-ing and Roger-ing. So to speak.

Fans of understated comedy will be delighted by the return of Roger & Val Have Just Got In, in which Alfred Molina and Dawn French trade tender blows as a childless middle-aged couple dealing with the minutiae and enormity of everyday existence.

As before, each slow-burning episode consists of a digressive exchange between the pair as they rattle around their careworn house, with the viewer cast as a silent eavesdropper gradually assembling the details of their unseen outside lives.

And though I'm loath to describe it as a gentle comedy - so often a pejorative euphemism - it really is apt in this case. Humour and pathos arise naturally from the comfortable eccentricities of its endearing protagonists, whose unwavering love and support of each other makes for a refreshing change from the usual antagonism of sitcom marriages.

And yet despite that, there's nothing cosy about Roger & Val..., as an underlying sense of impending tragedy is never far from the surface. Indeed, in its own quiet way, it's one of the most ambitious comedies on TV, almost like the anti-Mrs Brown's Boys.

There's a recent trend for things to be well-made and performed but not funny - The Cafe seemed to just forget the jokes while Cricklewood Greats didn't seem to think they were weighty enough to include. Some people have been somewhat unfairly adding RAVHJGI into this bracket. Somewhat unfairly because, really, it's a sitcom that's not supposed to be funny. It is after all based around a couple who have never got over the death of their baby. The eye for detail in the dialogue and performances is what makes the show, little spaces, hints and drops. While you can appreciate the fact that Dawn French reins it in at all, Alfred Molina is brilliant.

This gem from last year was executive produced by Hugo Blick, the man behind BBC2's mighty thriller The Shadow Line. However, if you come to Roger and Val expecting dark violence and crushing suspense, you'll be terribly disappointed. It's more like Blick's previous series Marion & Geoff or Sensitive Skin, a muted, micro-observed domestic drama that has enough funny and absurd moments to qualify as sitcom, even if that tag feels all wrong. Alfred Molina and Dawn French are superb as a devoted but prickly married couple with a tragedy in their past that only emerges via hints over the course of the series. The plotting is understated, to put it mildly (tonight's opener is taken up with hunting for the guarantee for a broken vacuum cleaner), but also sweet, funny and very sad. If you missed it first time round, record the whole series - you won't regret it.

Radio Times review

Half an hour in real time, in the house of a middle-aged couple (Alfred Molina and Dawn French) who have Just Got In from work. No scenes outside. No other characters. Few traditional "jokes". Is that the recipe for the year's best sitcom? Yes, because comedy is character and these characters were exquisite.

With writers Emma and Beth Kilcoyne having nailed the peculiar rhythms and catchphrases of long-term cohabitants, almost everything this melancholy but sweetly supportive pair said could raise a low-key, warm titter.

But the series wasn't content with being a perfectly observed micro-comedy about marriage. As that melancholy took over, and Val and Roger's charming vulnerability assumed a darker, more dramatic hue, we learnt that they were bound together not just by domestic convenience, but by grief. The searingly sad fourth episode, where the nature of that loss was revealed, was the best half-hour of telly of 2010 in any genre.

The first thing we see tonight is the notice next to the front door. "Roger have you got: phone, wallet, house keys, bin bag, diary . . ." it reads. Has this always been there, or is it a side-effect of the momentous events of last week? Either way, things have changed in the house where our touching, multi-layered domestic drama has unfolded over the past weeks, and they come to a head tonight. Roger feels Val has been melodramatic over their recent ructions, not something you could accuse the series of. Only by a gentle drip-feed of hints have we gathered the extent of Roger and Val's hidden stresses, dealing with a current bereavement and with reminders of an old but terrible one. As usual, Dawn French and Alfred Molina play it to perfection.

It's the last episode of what has been one of the best, most original sitcoms in years. Things have clearly changed since last week, but, as ever, nothing is quite spelt out. Val, who is staying at Sue's, has shocking news for Roger - she's going to a reunion dinner, and 'Ian in New Zealand', who is no longer in New Zealand, will be there. This is deeply disturbing new for Roger, who will go to any lengths to stop Val going...

"No other foodstuff is as uncompromising as a kipper," says flustered food technology teacher Val in the penultimate episode of this microscopically observed comedy. Its slow burning approach may not be to everyone's tastes, but this series about the banalities of married life has become something rather special. While not a lot physically happens (tonight Roger and Val sit on the bed, sipping tea, and stare at a computer screen), there's more going on beneath the surface. The couple (played to perfection by Dawn French and Alfred Molina) bicker about the mundane and gently bounce off one another's playful exchanges, but their lives are soaked with a strange sadness stemming from an event in their past, never mentioned until now.

In tonight's episode, Val comes home from work to find Roger hiding under the duvet in a darkened bedroom. Roger is on compassionate leave following the death of his father and has acted on the advice of his grief counsellor by writing a description of an idealised version of his life. But the nervy Roger has mistakenly emailed his heartfelt outpouring to the entire senior management team at the garden centre where he works. "Reply all - two words I'll never click again," says a hideously embarrassed Roger. "What about your job, Roger, your pension?" panics Val. As the couple try to salvage the situation, events take a more touching turn.