Woman on the edge
Can Sharon Horgan’s marriage survive pressures of lockdown in captivating f ilm?
IRISH actress and writer Sharon Horgan could be on course for another small screen hit, this time alongside James McAvoy in a gritty new BBC film set in lockdown.
The star of Pulling and Catastrophe will appear with McAvoy in Together, which is slated for release later this year.
Horgan and McAvoy star as a married couple, named ‘He’ and ‘She’, who face into the challenges brought about by the pandemic in March 2020.
The film has been described as ‘a supremely relatable drama’, ‘captivating’, ‘raucously funny’ and ‘a terrific showcase for the two leads’.
Horgan plays a charity worker, and daughter to an ‘old socialist mother’, while McAvoy is selfemployed and has to let his staff go.
The film was made in just 10 days, with a script from Dennis Kelly who worked with Horgan previously on their BBC Three sitcom Pulling. Stephen Daldry, who has worked on all four seasons of The Crown, directed.
Horgan said: ‘I think everyone who got involved in this film had no
intention of doing a Covid drama but then we read Dennis’s script and changed our minds.’
Together shows the couple at the start of a year of lockdown, as they are about to be forced to find out how much – or little – they have in common.
McAvoy became a star in the X-Men franchise. But in Together he shows a much darker side, prowling through the rooms of his cosy house with an animal intensity.
Horgan, meanwhile, wields a whiplash tongue and neither takes prisoners nor censors her wickedest thoughts.