One of the best Covid dramas so far: BBC2’s Together reviewed

Let me start with a spot of admin: if you’re wondering what The Speccie makes of GB News, it’ll be reviewed next week once the channel’s had a fair chance to establish itself. In the meantime BBC2’s Together took an impeccably up-to-date subject and gave it surprisingly old-fashioned treatment — by returning us to the far-off days when TV drama had its roots in theatre rather than cinema. Not only was it a 90-minute two-hander, but the characters spoke to both each other and the audience on a single set.

Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy played an unnamed couple (always a bit annoying for a reviewer but I won’t let that affect my steely objectivity) who entered the first Covid lockdown convinced of the fact that they hated each other. ‘I actually think of him as a cancer,’ the woman told us. ‘One of the really bad ones.’ ‘The only thing keeping us together is little Artie,’ the man pointed out — although even their son’s name was a matter of bitter dispute, with her passionately preferring ‘Arthur’.

Of course, back in happier times ‘we have absolutely nothing in common’ was cheerfully glossed as ‘opposites attract’. Now, the contrast between his working-class entrepreneurship and her middle-class liberalism had become just one more way for them to stereotype each other. So how would they get on once they were banged up together for the duration? The answer is that, somewhat to their embarrassment, they began to remember some of the reasons for their former fondness.

Thursday’s drama duly traced this hesitant remembering as any well-made stage play would. Which is to say that it could occasionally be over-schematic but on the whole it kept our sympathies shifting efficiently from one partner to the other until they finally settled on both.