Marriage

Married couple Ian (Sean Bean) and Emma (Nicola Walker) return from a holiday in Spain. After obligatory visits to her ageing father (James Bolam), as well as the cemetery, where their son is buried, Emma goes straight back into work mode. She is ambitious and proactive but struggles to get her superior to take her ideas for the firm seriously. Meanwhile, Ian, who recently lost his job, doesn’t quite know what to do with himself during the day. Both of them really only seem entirely at ease when they are with each other.

Marriage is first and foremost a show about communication. When the pair celebrate their 27^th anniversary, Emma’s father asks her what they have to talk about. She replies that there’s always something. Later on, Emma and Ian’s daughter Jess meets a young man who tells her that he feels that they “could talk for 1000 years and wouldn’t get bored”. Is finding someone who you know how to talk to the secret to a successful relationship?

While the four hour-long episodes of this BBC drama take place over varying stretches of time, the scenes themselves are set in real-time. This means an unfiltered back and forth in dialogue, iterations, futile pleasantries or small talk to fill uncomfortable silences. When a character feels ignored, they repeat what they have said to get a reaction. There are well-crafted particularities to the way each of them speaks: Emma’s boss, for instance, will dismiss his remarks as jokes if they are not received the way he intended. Not seldom, the viewer may actually cringe in second-hand embarrassment at the protagonist’s words or behaviour, because it is all too easy to see one’s own mistakes reflected back at oneself.

The way Ian and Emma are framed in the shots at the airport or the supermarket makes it clear that their story is not extraordinary, that everyone around them has a life as complex as their own. On occasion, the camera will follow these passersby for a brief instant of sonder.

Looking at everyday people like ants through a magnifying glass, author Stefan Golaszewski’s focus on capturing an authentic portrayal of daily lives and the navigation of relationships feels like a good exercise for his actors to get into character, rather than a show in itself. First viewers have immediately taken to social media to find creative comparisons of what they might find more interesting to watch than Bean arguing about jacket potatoes.

British Realism is one of the top genres for UK films, but despite the title, audiences wouldn’t view kitchen sink dramas from said room in the house. There is a different form of engagement in an arthouse cinema or film festival, and as such the format for Marriage may not be ideal for prime-time television or streaming services.

Selina Sondermann

Marriage is released on BBC iPlayer on 14^th August 2022.

Watch the trailer for Marriage here: