WOMAN ON THE EDGE
Can Sharon Horgan’s toxic marriage survive the pressures of lockdown in this captivating new drama?
TOGETHER Thursday, BBC2, 9pm
The only thing that makes this remotely bearable is that I get to leave the house each day.’ It’s a brutal admission for a family man (James McAvoy, inset) to make but, sadly, a bitter declaration that will be all too familiar in many homes across the country. As will be the equally brutal response from his partner (Sharon Horgan, left): ‘I feel exactly the same.’
Unfortunately, these two are just at the start of a year of lockdown and are about to be forced to find out how much – or little – they have in common, in the brilliantly witty, moving and soulful new feature-length drama by Dennis Kelly (Utopia, Pulling).
As Together gets under way, you fear the worst for the chances of this relationship surviving, despite the child they’ve had together, in a set-up that’s uncannily reminiscent of
Horgan’s Catastrophe.
But it enters far grimmer territory than the Channel 4 sitcom as the months go by and the pandemic leaves its mark on their lives in all kinds of ways. From the absurdity of the desperate search for aubergines amid the frenzy of panic-buying, to eventual tragedy all too close to home as the national death toll mounts.
Will McAvoy and Horgan’s characters’ (neither is named) love for one another survive? Or will the confines of lockdown rules leave them desperate never to see each other again once they can escape?
Directed with supreme craftsmanship by Stephen Daldry – the man behind
The Crown and Billy Elliot – and dripping with wonderfully memorable lines born of Kelly’s richly inventive wordsmithery and merciless insight into human fallibility, Together is a supremely relatable drama. It’s also captivating, often raucously funny and a terrific showcase for the two leads.
McAvoy has come on in leaps and bounds since he claimed our attention in Shameless to become firmly established as an international star in the X-Men franchise. But here he shows a much darker side, prowling through the rooms of his cosy house with an animal intensity and unleashing bile with terrifying ease.
Horgan, meanwhile, more than holds her own, wielding a whiplash tongue and neither taking prisoners nor censoring her wickedest thoughts in shocking moments that dare us not to laugh. The result is an unmissably explosive battle of the sexes, and a dead-on snapshot of the nation’s experience of lockdown.