Together reviews: ‘an absolute wonder’

Directed by Stephen Daldry, BBC2’s feature-length drama takes an “unflinching” look at a middle-class couple, identified only as “She” (Sharon Horgan) and “He” (James McAvoy), who must confront issues they have hitherto ignored as they sit out the pandemic in suburbia, said Ed Cumming in The Independent. Alternating between dialogues and monologues in which both characters break the fourth wall, it’s claustrophobic but compelling – and sometimes very funny.

Together is “an absolute wonder”, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Dennis Kelly’s script perfectly captures not only the stresses of lockdown, but the “emotional dilapidations” of a dying relationship, and Horgan and McAvoy give it “their understated all”.

Their chemistry is superb, agreed Sarah Carson in The i Paper – she wickedly sharp, he cheeky and gleefully arrogant. The script brims with “dazzling” one-liners as it weaves together pain and silliness, hatred and truth; it is also ferociously political. Horgan’s seven-minute monologue in which she describes her mother’s death in a care home was perhaps the greatest performance of her career. As someone who had suffered a similar loss, “I had to stop watching and weep”.

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It’s “almost impossible” to dislike Horgan and McAvoy, says Katie Rosseinsky in the London Evening Standard. However, it’s hard not to feel like this project “would have been more at home on the stage than the screen”.

Where to watch: BBC iPlayer