TAKING STOCK (TOGETHER)

After 15 months of living in lockdown or semi-lockdown, what we need right now is a TV movie about lockdown - right?

With theatres shut and TV and film production radically changed because of Covid, actors, writers and directors have tried to make sense of the past year and a half of learning to cope with the pandemic.

Michael Sheen and David Tennant were among the first out of the traps last June with the first series of their Zoom based sitcom 'Staged' on BBC1.

Earlier this year on the big screen (but really the small screen because of the shutting of cinemas), Doug Liman directed Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the Steven Knight scripted, comedy movie 'Lockdown' about a couple stuck together at home just as they were planning to separate.

Now in June 2021, we have Sharon Horgan and James McAvoy in 'Together,' a BBC TV movie about a couple stuck together in a house during lockdown.   just as they were planning to separate.

Written by Dennis Kelly and directed by Stephen Daldry, 'Together' draws the audience into the world of a warring couple with their young son, as they execute an uneasy truce during lockdown.

The fourth wall isn't so much broken but is completely shattered as the unnamed characters, He and She confide in us as if we have somehow broken lockdown rules and popped over to their home for a chat.

They share information and anecdotes, jointly telling their back story and being frank about their struggles before and during the pandemic 

Horgan's She has an elderly mum who is a bit of an old school leftie and who McAvoy's He adores, despite his tendency to vote Tory.

She works for an agency that helps refugees while He has a tech startup that provides a service that no-one really understands when he tries to describe his business.

The couple have a 10 year old son, Samuel Logan's Artie who obsesses about eating aubergine katsu curry and wearing a face visor but who is the glue that somehow keeps his parents' relationship from falling to pieces.

Over the course of 90 minutes, we check in with He and She during key milestones during the first year of Covid - the start of the initial lockdown when shoppers panicked and emptied supermarket shelves; the spike as the Coronavirus ripped through nursing homes; the vaccine hope that occurred around Christmas, the rollout of the vaccine program and the one year anniversary.

The couple's relationship changes from open disdain for each other to rediscovering their sexual desire to blazing rows over their future and vaccine queue jumping.

Kelly's drama is at its most stirring when he mixes the personal with the political as She's mum succumbs to Covid.

Horgan gets to deliver a particularly devastating account of how she watched her die over Facetime while pulled into a layby because of the restrictions on hospital visiting.

A grieving She subsequently tears into Boris Johnson Government's handling of the pandemic during the next instalment of the film, labelling it inept.

Whether you fall for 'Together' or not very much depends on your ability to tolerate mostly self-absorbed characters talking over each other and also its very theatrical set up which confines the action mostly to a suburban kitchen and a living room.

Some of the bickering and over-sharing about She and He's sex life or the consequences of eating dodgy mushrooms will grate with some viewers.

And despite being only 90 minutes long, there were times when this reviewer's mind began to wander - mostly towards the end, with Kelly's drama never quite scaling the heights of She's compelling account of her mother's death.

Shot over 10 days, Horgan and McAvoy turn in committed performances and attack Kelly's screenplay with great gusto.

While Horgan gets the chance to deliver the meatier material very effectively, McAvoy does a good job at showing He's increasing vulnerability as the pandemic wears on.

But while Kelly's drama is a noble attempt to capture life during lockdown, 'Together' just doesn't do enough to justify retreading what a lot of us have been going through these past 15 months.

The TV film's staginess is at times an asset and a weakness and your ability to tolerate He and She's foibles will pretty much determine your level of investment.

Some people will no doubt gush about its raw honesty about life under lockdown and the stresses and strains of a relationship, even in the safest of times.

Others may be amused by the banter but 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,' it ain't.

As Kelly and Daldry and their cast pinball between sarcasm and heartbreak, spite and tenderness, 'Together' struggles to hit the right note to sign off on convincingly.

Indeed, by the time the credits roll, you cannot help feeling that, as in real life, what you really crave is a TV drama that doesn't make you dwell on how crap the past 15 months have been.

What you really want is fiction that either reflects the world we once had or aspires to a world approaching normality.

Having spent 15 months mostly confined to our homes, we need fiction that takes us away from the mundane reality of a much more restricted world - not drama that simply underscores it.

('Together' was broadcast on BBC2 on June 17, 2021)

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