Together is a tonic for singles who spent Lockdown alone
When lockdown started, single people braced themselves: it was going to be a long road ahead of being thoroughly untouched. And it was a long road. By June, those of us who live on our own were fantasising about airport security pat-downs and desperately envious of those with their loved ones at hand.
But then, the grass is always greener. And Sharon Horgan’s stagey new TV drama, Together, is just the tonic for any lingering feelings of regret at being in lockdown toute seule. This is a claustrophobic 90-minuter that sees Horgan as She and James McAvoy as He: a hostile couple stuck together because of a child, facing each other across a table in a series of agonising monologues and duologues.
Together is a Covid chronicle, an encapsulation of the specific stresses and stiflings and indeed grief experienced during lockdown as the virus raged outside. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea: it’s more like a play than a piece of TV, and it’s extremely intense – one friend described it as “stressful, tedious and brilliant”. Still, Horgan is a genius (see the BBC comedy Motherland for details), and I can’t think of anyone better suited to the job of portraying the very particular domestic strain of the last year and a half.