Fans of kitchen sink drama are in for a fine time, as one of the best in recent years is finally available to watch here in Australia. The first episode of Marriage season one is now streaming on ABC iview, with subsequent episodes dropping every Saturday.
Written and directed by Stefan Golaszewski (Him & Her, Mum) and starring Sean Bean (Game of Thrones) as the recently redundant Ian and Nicola Walker (Spooks) as his solicitor wife, the four-part series looks at the intricacies and contradictions of their twenty-seven-year marriage. A closely observed drama, the series eschews big moments and conflicts in favour of telling silences, unfinished sentences, and the way long-term partners carefully step around old wounds and grievances.
If Marriage Story was a portrait of how Americans handle relationship crises, this is the somber British version–much less showy, much more emotionally devastating, certainly more familiar, and far more likely to linger in the memory.
The series marks another fine turn from Sean Bean, who we’re used to seeing die in a variety of interesting ways across a variety of genres (Black Death, in which Yorkshire’s favourite son is pulled apart by horses, is a highlight in his showreel). But, as his recent performance in Jimmy McGovern’s superb prison drama, Time, showed us, he’s a prodigiously talented actor who doesn’t need to die on screen to get our attention. And Nicola Walker’s plaudits are just as well-earned: the stage, screen and audio star having picked up two BAFTA nominations for her work on Last Tango in Halifax alone.
Which means that Marriage is an acting showcase more than anything else, a chance for two accomplished performers to disappear into their roles and bring Golaszewski’s subtly shaded characters to indelible life. If that sounds appealing, the domestic drama awaits you on ABC iview.
