Dawn French with Alfred Molina in BBC TWo's Roger & Val Have Just Got In.
"I wanted to do a show that was opposite to anything I had ever done before,” says Dawn French of her BBC Two sitcom Roger and Val Have Just Got In. In many ways, it’s also unlike anything that has been on television before.
The show is a slow, surreal comedy in which French and Alfred Molina – “Fred” as she calls him – star as a middle-aged couple: she’s a food technology teacher, he’s a botanist facing an industrial tribunal. Every episode is set at the same time of day, the first half-hour after both return home from work, and is shot in real time.
“So,” explains French, “if it says in the script, ‘She makes a cup of tea,’ then you actually have to put the kettle on and wait for it to boil.” All while the cameras are rolling.
Compelling and intriguing, short on belly laughs and free from canned laughter, the show can be deeply unsettling. It’s also exceptionally intimate, to the extent that watching it feels a little like spying on the characters. As with early episodes of The Office, the viewer is left thinking, “Am I supposed to be taking this seriously or not?”.
French is proud of the fact that Roger and Val is more drama than comedy, and has said the process of getting the funding to make it was “like stealing money from the comedy department to make a drama”. She scarcely seems to care if anyone else finds it funny or not, as long as it succeeds in being both bold and different. “I wanted it to show real people living a real life with real pain,” she says. “That’s not comedy territory. I wanted it to be about something important, but without bashing you over the head.”
