If there was one moment that summed up the peculiar charm of Last Tango In Halifax as it returned for a fifth series on Sunday, it was when dear, thoughtful Alan (Derek Jacobi) had to admit at a family gathering that he’d lent his daughter, Gillian, money to put right the woodworm issue in their farmhouse.
Celia (Anne Reid) looked at him aghast. Her eagerly awaited new kitchen in their bungalow would now have to wait — and she wasn’t afraid of ruining a birthday party to let everyone know how put-out she was. This one perfectly written scene by Sally Wainwright sets out the entire sweep of family life: the tangled relationships, money issues, misguided priorities and, most of all, the black humour.
So how is married life treating Alan and Celia, who reconnected in their 70s in the first series? ‘We’ve come to a seven-year itch,’ sighs Jacobi. Reid looks at him and protests, ‘Actually, it’s gorgeous — we don’t have a cross word.’
‘But we go into moods, don’t we?’ says Jacobi, baffled. After all, they’ve just filmed the farmhouse scene and Alan has found that Celia is not as easy to live with as she might have seemed.
‘Do we? Oh, you mean our characters go into moods! I was thinking about us,’ she laughs, before looking around the set, pointing at Jacobi and announcing to anyone who will listen, ‘I’m telling you, he’s a very nice man. And me — someone tried to help me up out of a chair this morning and they got their head bitten off!’
The easy chemistry between Jacobi and Reid on and off set is key to Last Tango In Halifax. This story of an extended family brought together by the rekindled love of childhood sweethearts could easily have been a bit Last Of The Summer Wine but in Wainwright’s capable hands — it was based on the experience of her own mum — it’s a realistic look at people’s flawed life choices, with all the envy, love and pathos that entails.
Jacobi jokingly describes the new series as ‘Alan obsessing about finding a job, Celia obsessing about finding a new kitchen,’ but they both know it’s so much more than that — particularly as Alan’s brother Ted (Timothy West) turns up with suspected dementia.
‘That’s quite a harsh storyline, yes,’ says Reid. ‘But delicately handled — it’s a drama but there’s plenty of comedy too. I mean, that’s how life works, which I think is one of the reasons it’s so popular. We just hope people will like it as much as they used to.’
‘People relate to these characters,’ agrees Jacobi. ‘I love playing Alan because my reputation is a bit classical, a bit costume, a bit Shakespeare. And suddenly I was asked to play this ordinary Northern guy. I am an ordinary East End guy, so it was lovely to drop the posh.’
So while Jacobi says that nothing ‘terribly big or exciting’ happens in Last Tango In Halifax, he does recognise that it reflects the ‘sort of life we’re all having, with its problems and relationships’. And the new series manages that rare feat of pleasing old and new fans across the generations — if you have missed the previous four seasons, it doesn’t necessarily matter.
‘It’s such a simple, clever idea,’ says Reid of Wainwright’s initial concept. ‘We’ve all fancied someone at 16. I did, a boy at Rada who disappeared. I don’t know where he is now! Alan in the back of his mind has always thought ‘if only’, and then he gets the chance… and it’s not quite the pretty girl he worshipped from afar! He grows to love the faults…’
Which included, in the last series, Celia’s involvement in am-dram.
‘That was so difficult to do,’ remembers Reid. ‘You might laugh but acting badly is really hard!’
‘Well, I once had to act badly in an episode of Frasier and it came very easily,’ replies Jacobi in mock protest.
‘You got an Emmy for it!’ says Reid.
Talking of America, it says a lot for Last Tango In Halifax that it’s translated so well across the globe. Jacobi tells a brilliant story of how the schedules turned out in the the US so that at 8pm he was married to Anne Reid In Last Tango and by 10pm he was married to Ian McKellen in Vicious. Reid gently indulges in some wonderful oneupmanship, however.
‘I was walking down Sixth Avenue in New York, and this lady tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Hello, are you Anne Reid’. I nodded and she said, ‘Well I’m Kathleen Turner… and I absolutely love Last Tango In Halifax!”
■ Last Tango In Halifax is on Sundays on BBC1
