Everything’s coming up ROSIE

ALL PARENTS MAKE MISTAKES, DAVID TENNANT TELLS JAMES RAMPTON – WE JUST HAVE TO LEARN TO ADMIT IT

N A hilarious scene from the first episode of the second series of Bafta-winning comedy There She Goes, 11-year-old Rosie defiantly shakes her head at every one of her mother’s suggestions. Looking on, dad Simon, played by David Tennant, tells his wife: ‘It’s like everything you suggest is s***. This must be what it’s like to be Alan Sugar’s apprentice.’

It’s a good joke but given that Rosie has learning difficulties so severe she has a mental age of a toddler and is unable to speak more than the odd word, was Tennant, a father of five himself, worried it might be in poor taste to treat this subject in a comic fashion? Not in the slightest.

‘The only person who said it might be tasteless was a journalist at the press launch of the first series,’ Tennant says. ‘To be fair, he said, “Listen, I love this, but you do realise you’re going to get torn apart?” But I never really believed that because There She Goes has got such a truthfulness to it.’

That truthfulness comes from husband-and-wife writers Shaun Pye and Sarah Crawford. There She Goes is an autobiographical comedy that exposes the particular challenges of their life to the nation’s gaze in unflinching detail. The first series won widespread praise in 2018, earning a Bafta for Jessica Hynes, who plays Rosie’s mother, Emily.

‘The comedy in There She Goes is completely believable, like a lot of humour that stems from struggle,’ says Hynes. ‘Comedy is very at home in

We’re all so desperate to get it right as parents because you only get one go at it

challenging situations and sometimes it’s the best response to them.’

She’s right. Pye insists the series is actually a celebration of life with his own daughter, Jo, and every incident depicted in There She Goes has happened to his family. The show is never laughing at Rosie (played by Miley Locke). It also helps that Pye is candid about his flaws.

‘It’s great how honest Shaun has been prepared to be about how s*** he has been,’ says Tennant. ‘I think every parent recognises that. Even Shaun admits that in the first draft of the script, he was rather more heroic until Sarah read it and went, “Come on!”

‘To admit to one’s own shortcomings is really hard to do in any aspect of life but particularly when it’s to do with being a parent. We’re all so desperate to get it right because you only get one go at it and we all know that we’re getting it wrong every day!’

‘Shaun and Sarah detail all the work that’s involved and show that Simon and Emily have come out the other side,’ says mum-of-three Hynes. ‘I think of it as a romance in that sense.’

‘It’s joyous, without a doubt,’ Tennant adds. ‘None of this is maudlin. Where Simon and Emily have triumphed as a family unit is that they’ve always been able to talk about their strengths and weaknesses. You think, “I don’t know how I would cope with that.” But they’ve found their way of being a happy family.’

There She Goes begins on BBC2 at 9.30pm tomorrow