DEBORAH’S MUST-WATCH TV CLASSICS

Us (2020)

Available on BBC iPlayer

Us is an adaptation of the novel by David Nicholls about a middle-aged married couple, which doesn’t sound compelling but is. It’s beautifully acted and scripted, funny as well as moving, and I watched all four episodes, one after the other, bang, bang, bang, bang. Didn’t intend to. Just had to.

Us stars Saskia Reeves and Tom Hollander as Connie and Douglas, who are due to embark on a three-week tour of Europe before their son starts at art college. Douglas, a biochemist, has planned the trip with meticulous precision. But then, as they’re lying sleeplessly in bed, Connie says: ‘Douglas, I’ve been thinking about leaving. I think our marriage might be over… I want change.’ Douglas is baffled and thrown. Somewhat inexplicably, I agree, they decide to go ahead with their trip, which now has an added goal for Douglas: can he win Connie back? Much comedy is wrung from Douglas’s squareness. This is a man who organises sightseeing to ‘beat the crowds’ and, when writing a list of ways he might change, includes his plan to be ‘more spontaneous’. Reeves is wonderful but Hollander (above) owns this. He plays a boring man not boringly, and how you do that, I don’t know.