Conversations from a Long Marriage

I'm sitting in my kitchen, drinking the third cup of tea and bingeing this fabulous series. Gosh, I just love this and I love these two. Roger and Joanna are simply perfect in this witty, hilarious and poignant portrayal of two people who know each other so well, and yet, never cease to surprise the other with hidden confessions, anecdotes and gossip.

I really hope the Beeb doesn't remove this as I can't think of anything that's made me chuckle and laugh at their antics while seeing so many similarities in my own long marriage.

In this day and age, I think the most important thing is to see the funny and, sometimes, ridiculous side of life and this wondrous series does just that.

The British have had a long history of injecting copious amounts of saccharin into this sort of 'Britcom' plot - Second Thoughts, It's Awfully Bad for Your Eyes, Darling, My Wife Next Door, etc. - the list is long.

It always involves a sort upper / middle / lower class angst about thin walls in hotels or an amazed wife telling her husband, "But you never drink sherry!" "Well, !'ve decided to give it a go - we're off to Spain next week" Think of a nightmare mash-up of Benny Hill,Confessions of a Window Cleaner and The Good Life. The couples' age crisis is always mid-something but with the life experience of a fourteen year old who's just discovered tampons in the bathroom - ooh..errr, missus! And the actors love it. Where normally they would expect to be cut off mid-sentence for overdoing the wild, feigned outrage at a lack of sausages for breakfast at a seaside hotel in Southwold, nobody stops them. Of course we have always got the remote to ditch these programmes: but then sometimes a little light, self-inflicted torture makes you appreciate the best offerings.