Making a CLEAN BREAK?

Divorce lawyer Nicola Walker faces her most difficult case yet – her own failed marriage – as the nail-biting drama reaches its epic conclusion

THE SPLIT Monday, BBC1, 9pm

She’s long been a star in the rarefied world of divorce lawyers who provide exorbitantly priced expertise for celebrities and the superrich when their relationships fall apart. But now Hannah Stern (Nicola Walker, right) is having to face the biggest case of her career – presiding over the final death throes of her own marriage.

Two years on from the second series – watched by more than six million viewers each week – writer Abi

Morgan (The Hour, Suffragette) presents the final season of her enthralling saga, centring on Hannah and her sisters, Nina (Annabel Scholey) and Rose (Fiona Button), and their mother Ruth (Deborah Findlay), director of the family law firm.

The show’s enormous popularity is easy to understand: every episode is a masterclass in absorbing and emotionally charged storytelling, thanks to razor-sharp dialogue and seemingly effortless performances from a brilliant ensemble cast.

As the six-part series begins,

Hannah and her barrister husband Nathan (Stephen Mangan, far right) are ready to pronounce the last rites on their relationship after repeated damaging betrayals, despite having spent 20 years together in what the outside world believed to be a rock-solid marriage.

The crucial question facing them is one that Hannah has all too often asked her own clients: is there any chance at all that they can keep matters amicable given all the hurt they’ve caused each other? Or is their own split poised to be a gulf that can never be bridged?

There are some new faces to add to the mix: look out for Lara Pulver (a memorable Irene Adler in Sherlock) as a child psychologist who has a major role to play in the developing story. And there’s the welcome return of other characters, including Christie (Barry Atsma), the handsome married former colleague with whom Hannah conducted a secret affair.

But most of all it’s Walker’s formidable performance that carries the show, with her portrayal of Hannah as a relatably human, contradictory and forgivably flawed heroine: brittle but strong, with high-powered intellect and quickfire wit, yet also driven by a maelstrom of emotions.

Plus there are all the delicious bon mots, particularly the world-weary wisdom of women having to contend with all the failings of the men in their lives and the affairs they pursue. As powerful matriarch Ruth observes: ‘Why can’t they ever just stick with meaningless sex?’

Watch and perhaps we’ll find out the answer to that particular question.