#Sean bean wife series
#Sean bean wife tv

“It feels to me like you might make a turn at that age,” says Golaszewski. Mum was praised for concentrating on the suburban existence – and love life – of a 59-year-old woman (Cathy, played by Lesley Manville), while Marriage dares to focus on a couple in late middle age. He’s more interested in ordinary people living ordinary lives. Golaszewski, as viewers of Mum will know, doesn’t do villains. It’s not about doing a softer character over a strong one.” His voice trails off as he considers the idea. “Even strong villains have their vulnerabilities.” “I just do what comes up, what I find exciting. “Nah, I don’t really think about that,” he says. I ask Bean if he has deliberately sought out softer, more damaged characters in recent years – less obvious heroes, bearing fewer swords. Bean – in sharp contrast to his gruff characters in Game of Thrones or Sharpe – is quiet, almost shy Golaszewski describes him as “gentle”. Walker is razor-sharp, garrulous, prone to thinking aloud. They make for a captivating, plausible couple, even out of character. She, a household name at 52, thanks to her brilliant double act with Sanjeev Bhaskar in ITV crime drama Unforgotten, as well as her roles in The Split and Last Tango in Halifax. He, having transformed his Hollywood hardman image via sensational, Bafta-winning performances in the Jimmy McGovern dramas Broken and Time. “It’s happening now, isn’t it?”īoth Bean and Walker come to Marriage at the top of their game. “The good couples have worked out that it doesn’t happen in the dramatic moments, it happens in the mundane ones…” Bean, now 63 years old and married five times since 1981, chips in. When you’ve been with someone for 30 years, life happens when you’re making them a cup of tea or sorting through the laundry. Walker – who has been in a relationship since the mid-1990s with the actor Barnaby Kay, whom she married in 2006 – says: “There are lots of long relationships in my family and, to succeed at that, you have to do what Ian and Emma have done: step back sometimes, not always do what you want to do. “I hope viewers might be touched by it… and that no one gets divorced!” But I think most people’s lives are spent seeking togetherness, calm, joy and stability,” he says. “There are a lot of stories told about the decadent or the angry, or the nasty, or the cruel.

#Sean bean wife series

Golaszewski hopes his series will have a more uplifting effect on viewers. Pedants will point out that in the same year the law was amended to make divorce easier – but the Swedish national marriage guidance service did also report a surge in demand in the wake of the drama, and Bergman had to remove his number from the phone directory after he was inundated with calls for relationship counselling.

#Sean bean wife tv

You could call it: Scenes from a Marriage.Īfter Ingmar Bergman’s bleak series of that name was shown on Swedish TV in 1973, the country’s divorce rate spiked. As Bean puts it: “Not a lot happens, but, if you examine it closely…” He trails off and Walker finishes his sentence: “. Their faltering relationship is depicted with often unsettling naturalism, as the viewer becomes voyeur to barbed airport arguments about jacket potatoes or long, wordless scenes of domestic torpor. Emma is forging ahead with her legal career, increasingly drawn to her handsome younger boss, and worn down by the constant demands of her elderly father (played by James Bolam). When we meet Ian and Emma – who share the agony of having lost a son several years before – he has recently been made redundant his beloved, domineering mother has died and the black dog sits at his shoulder. “A 27-year marriage? It’s fraught with danger.” Because it’s a marriage.” Bean chuckles in agreement. “They love each other very much,” says Walker. Well, not their marriage, but Ian and Emma’s, the middle-aged couple they portray in Marriage, a new BBC drama by Stefan Golaszewski, the 41-year-old writer-director of Bafta-winning sitcoms Mum and Him & Her. In a chilly conference centre in the commuter town of Gerrards Cross, Sean Bean and Nicola Walker are reflecting on their 27-year marriage.