Spare us Sean’s suburban sex scene

BORING or thrilling? everyone has been arguing about Marriage (bbC1), the four-part drama starring Sean bean and nicola Walker as Ian and emma, a pair of crushed introverts who seemed incapable of saying what they really think.

The mini-series was a lo-fi, slomo consideration of a longmarried every-couple who wore anoraks, had ants in the kitchen bin and bickered about everything from baked potatoes to slippers. They were beaten down by life, fractured by loss and, in the case of recently unemployed Ian, in need of some revitalising shower gel.

‘one with herbs or extracts that give you a bit of a boost in the morning,’ he told the shop assistant. ‘Anything to get you through the day without crying,’ was the response. Many viewers found it impossible to get through the four-hour moan-athon without crying from boredom, while critics lavished the drama with five-star praise.

Me? given Mr bean’s recent remarks about working with onset intimacy coaches — the old rogue finds they spoil the moment — I watched in holy terror of a sex scene developing between the lumpen couple. Ian and emma thrashing around on the polycotton sheets, just to add another layer of mottled realism to the mundanity, would have been too much.

There were highlights among this fiesta of working- class fetishisation and, in the end, emma’s support and love for her broken husband Ian won me over. Any fool can get divorced, but to bond with your spouse, to persevere and overcome with them, has a beauty and divinity all of its own.

Viewers who stayed the course were rewarded with the thought that love can conquer all, even in Hemel Hempstead. And, also, with the cheeringly unfashionable notion that keeping a stiff upper lip is maybe not such a bad thing after all.