Dawn French and Emilia Fox on finding themselves fighting over a philandering cook in their sexy and darkly comic new series Delicious

What on ear th would the Vicar of Dibley say? Dawn French is returning to TV this Christmas in one of her very rare appearances since her roly-poly Reverend finally hung up her cassock – playing Gina, a saucy cook at war with another woman over her philandering ex- husband in the aptly named Delicious. The sexy, often darkly funny four-part drama centres on their love triangle as brilliant head chef and restaurateur Leo rekindles his passion for Gina behind the back of his current wife Sam, and explores what happens when two very different women want the same thing.

‘Gina’s relationship with food is sensuous,’ says Dawn. ‘And that’s what Gina is. That’s what Leo fell in love with: she’s his muse. She’s bountiful and nurturing. She’s a feeder – literally. Cooking is in her blood. She uses food as her way of expressing love, although it can be a bit cloying and suffocating.’

Leo, played by Game Of Thrones actor Iain Glen, is a successful entrepreneur, chef and hotel owner who made his name and his fortune with his exceptional Italian cooking – a skill he learnt from Gina, who’s half-Italian – and now runs the idyllic Penrose Hotel in the Tamar Valley in Cornwall. Since divorcing Gina, who supplies his hotel with her home-made patisserie, 18 years earlier his culinary empire has continued to grow, with the fruits of his success now being shared with his uptight wife Sam, played by Emilia Fox, who runs the hotel with him. But when she bursts in on one of Gina and Leo’s trysts, she discovers the painful truth about what her husband and his ex-wife are up to.

While Gina sees food as a pleasure and uses it to hook Leo back in, Sam takes the opposite approach to eating. Paranoid that Leo will leave her for a younger, slimmer model, Sam obsessively maintains her sizeeight figure: so it’s a huge shock when she discovers Leo is sleeping with his curvy ex again.

‘Sam’s accepted that Leo has sex with other women because she knows he’s ultimately hers, but she finds it hard,’ says Emilia. ‘So it couldn’t be worse for her when she discovers Leo’s having an affair with Gina. She’s the opposite of Sam in every way, from dress size to personality to the kind of food they like.

‘It’s humiliating that he’s chosen to go back to her, especially as she considered Gina one of her best friends. But Leo’s first and only love is food. Gina understands this and celebrates it, whereas Sam is shut out of the primal joy they both indulge in.’

There’s more to Delicious than the battle for Leo though. Both Gina and Sam have complex relationships with their children, for starters. Gina and Leo’s daughter Teresa is battling an eating disorder and an allergy to water, while Sam and Leo’s son Michael is becoming a womaniser like his dad and is fiercely protective of his mother. Then there’s Leo’s spiky mother Mimi, played by Sheila Hancock, who adds an extra dimension to the drama when she gets involved in her son’s tangled love life.

‘Delicious is not just about two women fighting over a ma n ,’ s ays Dawn. ‘It’s not even about the man, weirdly. It’s about betrayal and forgiveness and both the ugliness and beauty of the situation these very different women find themselves in. There isn’t a winner and a loser. The female characters are flawed. They’re mothers who have complex relationships with their children, and they rub up against each other. Everyone’s got a secret.’

When Sam discovers the affair, all sorts of resentments that have been hidden away for years while the women tried to have a civil relationship come bubbling up to the surface. ‘The heart of it is the relationship between two women who both love the same man,’ says Emilia. ‘They’ve had to co-exist for many years, but there are things that haven’t been said to each other that only come out now. Ultimately, it becomes about the survival of both Sam and Gina as women and mothers, and discovering that secrets are painful and truth is the only way forward.’

Since The Vicar Of Dibley ended Dawn has been particularly choosy

‘Sam is shut out of the primal joy they indulge in’