In this four-part series starring a wonderfully careworn Nicola Walker and Sean Bean, writer and director Stefan Golaszewski steps away from the comic arena where he made his name. Marriage is a meticulously understated study of the struggles and small moments of cheer in the life of a middle-aged couple, married for 27 years, and mostly living lives of quiet desperation in a nameless regional town.
Like Golaszewski’s sitcoms Mum and Him and Her, Marriage focuses on the everyday and the humdrum. The clothes, the couple’s home, even the colour palette of the sky are drab. As in Mum, the words that are not spoken carry more weight than what’s said aloud. Golaszewski, 42, has great empathy for characters one, two or three decades older.
