Marriage: Season 1 Reviews
Geordie Gray The Australian
Here is a show about an ordinary, boring couple falling apart in the same ordinary, boring ways as the rest of us. Except this couple is Sean Bean and Nicola Walker, so playing witness to their benign bickering is infinitely more compelling and enjoyable.
Full Review | Aug 17, 2023
Lola Galán El Pais (Spain)
We must thank Golaszewski for the honesty with which the series is written and filmed, perhaps too sincere to compete with other television products loaded with artifice. [Full review in Spanish]
Full Review | May 22, 2023
Paul Kalina The Age (Australia)
However banal and tedious Ian and Emma’s interactions are throughout the four-part drama, it is freighted with familiarity, realism and an unmistakeable sense of this being the way two people who have endured a very long partnership talk to each other.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 14, 2022
Lynden Barber Limelight
Nicola Walker is surely the hardest-working actor in British television. She’s everywhere, sometimes all at once. But since she’s also very good, that’s hardly a problem.
Full Review | Oct 3, 2022
Scott Bryan BBC.com
I have never seen a show that has had such a marmite reaction, but this show is magnificent. I absolutely adore it, because everything in it is so natural to the extent where it hardly feels like a television show at all.
Full Review | Original Score: Must Watch | Sep 26, 2022
Alison Rowat The Herald (Scotland)
I loved its merciless accuracy. You had to stop nodding in recognition at all the little details lest your head dropped off by episode end.
Full Review | Sep 2, 2022
Ben East metro.co.uk
Writer and director Stefan Golaszewski made his name with the sitcoms Mum and Him & Her, but this is an altogether more considered and minimalist relationship study.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 1, 2022
James Jackson Times (UK)
... A style you either love or find tedious. Either way, the small moments are superbly observed.
Full Review | Aug 29, 2022
Carol Midgley Times (UK)
No plot twists, no big reveals, just an exquisitely observed paean to ordinary, painful human existence in all its agonies and indignities.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 17, 2022
Rachel Cooke New Statesman
Disparate emotions mingle like lime added to a pint of lager, embarrassment giving way to sudden pride, fondness shading into massive but unspoken irritation. Like life, all this is beautiful but painful.
Full Review | Aug 16, 2022
Gabriel Tate Times (UK)
Just like Golaszewski’s superlative Mum and Him and Her, the beauty is in the detail: the fidgeting, the sidelong glances, the silences by turns comfortable and loaded.
Full Review | Aug 15, 2022
Christopher Stevens Daily Mail (UK)
The story of Emma and Ian is somehow utterly absorbing. What a pleasure it can be to peek into lives more like our own.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 15, 2022
Jasper Rees Daily Telegraph (UK)
Perhaps the real Ians and Emmas watching Marriage while curled up on the sofa will take courage from this redemptive hymn to quiet decency.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 15, 2022
Rebecca Nicholson Guardian
There is a pitch-perfect realism to the way these characters talk without really saying anything, then put across what they really mean while saying nothing at all. It’s so cleverly done.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 15, 2022
Nick Hilton Independent (UK)
Whether you make it far enough to see these levers pulled will depend on your tolerance for the glacial pace, and lack of thematic urgency.
Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 15, 2022
Helen Hawkins The Arts Desk
The gifted writer-director Stefan Golaszewski has surpassed himself with his latest drama series, Marriage. Given hour-long episodes to play with, rather than the usual half-hour, he has created an unfeasibly rich four-parter out of the simplest of means.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Aug 15, 2022
Alex Moreland National World
Marriage is about communication. Or lack thereof: it’s as much about what people struggle to articulate as what they can say with ease, fascinated by silences that stretch between partners of decades and spontaneous conversations between strangers.
Full Review | Aug 15, 2022
Nick Curtis London Evening Standard
It’s a pleasure to see two such unflashy actors paired up on a minimalist narrative. Bolam is as good as ever and Alle adds a dose of brightness. This is a nuanced and delicately calibrated piece of work.
Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 12, 2022
Dan Einav Financial Times
... It’s the kind of show that successfully pulls off the trick of turning the television screen into a mirror: reflecting real life with disarming, unvarnished fidelity.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 12, 2022
