The Break up has been getting pulpier with each collection. With this shock two-parter (a late addendum after the present supposedly led to 2022), it might have lastly reached cleaning soap opera ranges of melodrama. 

Once we left off Abi Morgan’s vastly standard BBC drama – which follows the Defoes, a multi-generational household of divorce attorneys – Hannah (Nicola Walker) and Nathan (Stephen Mangan) had lastly referred to as it quits on their marriage following her affair with Dutch solicitor Christie (Barry Atsma). The opening episode reintroduced Hannah and Nathan as pleasant exes, uncertain about this new section of their lives, as the complete Defoe household rocked as much as Barcelona for the marriage of Hannah and Nathan’s daughter Liv (Elizabeth Roberts) to good-looking Spaniard Gael (Alex Guersman).

Nathan, now remarried, had an earring he swiftly eliminated; Hannah had just lately ghosted attractive new man Archie (Toby Stephens), who, in fact, then turned up on the wedding ceremony. From the beginning, it was clear the solicitors had been quickly going to be utilizing their drafting abilities for dramatic functions and debating the legality of prenups scribbled on napkins. Fountain pens at daybreak.

The place as soon as The Break up’s characters – which additionally consists of matriarch Ruth (Deborah Findlay) and her different daughters Nina (Annabel Scholey) and Rose (Fiona Button), the one non-lawyer within the household – trod a superb line between entertaining if inconceivable wit and nuanced emotional truth-telling, in these two hour-long episodes they had been continually saying issues designed purely for viewing pleasure with little to no feeling of authenticity.

Mangan has all the time performed Nathan with a candy nerdiness, however there have been moments right here the place his traces had been so overwritten they felt like am dram. “Then you definitely get married and actually shortly you’ve drifted previous lust, swung a left via familiarity and you then’re hovering round remorse and contempt earlier than you understand it, after which what have you ever acquired? A load of John Lewis crockery and Netflix exhibits you’ll be able to’t end,” he informed somebody in a muddled try to steer them that marriage wasn’t value it. Neat and humorous sure, however does anybody really speak like this?

A lot of the drama surrounded the “will they received’t they?” of Gael and Liv’s wedding ceremony, and the occasions that set it off beam. Nicola Walker continued to anchor the present, retaining an interesting mixture of maternal concern and middle-aged curiosity.

Is a divorced lady whose kids are lastly flying the nest supposed to be ok with courting? Particularly when her very job continues to indicate her that the chances are, all the time, stacked towards love? Walker has a face that shifts from one emotion to a different in a micro-second and right here, amongst the olive groves and dear flower preparations, she deployed it to great impact, morphing from flattered to offhand to business-like and again to affectionate in mere moments.

Stephens was a wonderful addition, a sturdy, likeable presence as Archie, the love curiosity and, in fact, additionally a lawyer. There have been tales too for Rose and Nina and their boyfriends, although they felt very very like afterthoughts.

The true drawback was that the cautious Paso Doble between romance and the exploration of what its reverse is likely to be (Hate? Friendship? Authorized battles?) round which the earlier seasons operated was finally utterly overwhelmed right here by a crude fandango, the place costly weddings with superb china and dangerous speeches routinely represented insincerity, whereas a seashore, an inexpensive costume and informal beers meant real love.

Once more, the script was absurdly trite on this level. Hannah even mentioned: “If there’s something extra romantic than hen in a basket and a karaoke machine then I don’t know what it’s.” Actually? At the moment of yr we would like our TV exhibits to be hotter and cuddlier than regular – however not a lot that they descend into telenovelas.

‘The Break up: Barcelona’ continues tomorrow at 9pm on BBC One