State Of The Union

Yesterday my wife and I celebrated five months of marriage. By celebrated I mean she turned to me and said, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve been married five months.’ To which I sardonically replied, ‘Yep, they said we wouldn’t make it. We proved them wrong.’


In all honesty marriage feels easy at the moment - and so it should. We’re happy at home, fulfilled at work, our families are in good health. It means we can focus on one another, spend time together, ensure the other feels valued. I do appreciate greater challenges lie ahead. How someone feels about their work today might be very different in the future. Other people one day may require greater attention, elevating them in priority, diminishing us. How we respond to those changes will be the true measure of love. I’m confident we will confront the vicissitudes of life together. I can't foresee a time when my respect for her will fade, that my recognition of what we started, what we built isn't remembered. But I’m not naïve enough to think there won’t be difficult tests along the way.


State Of The Union, written and created by Nick Hornby, is an examination of a marriage, further down the line than mine. It doesn’t so much document an itch, but an illness that requires urgent attention. Tom is an unemployed music critic, someone who has been rendered obsolete by technology. Louise is a successful gerontologist and the breadwinner in the family. Their occupations reflect their minds too: Tom is one to pontificate and hypothesize, whereas Louise prefers directness and solutions. There’s also a sense that their social classes don’t align: Tom married up, even his mother said so, and Louise down. Essentially as Tom puts it, they are as opposite as Montague and Capulet, just without the catastrophic violence. 

Hornby. (Getty Images)

Each episode is ten minutes long and focuses on the time before Tom (Chris O’ Dowd) and Louise (Rosamund Pike) go into their therapy session. The first begins with Tom doing a crossword and cross words are what he has for Louise. She apologises for how they got to this point. Tom doesn’t give the answer you would expect: Don’t worry. It’s as much my fault as it is yours. Instead he puts the responsibility on her: ‘You slept with someone else and now here we are.’ Her: ‘Except there’s a bit more to it than that isn’t there. You stopped sleeping with me and I started sleeping with someone else.’ For him, infidelity is the thing. An unmitigated offence to loyal marriage. A gross misconduct charge that could lead to its termination. For her, context is all. Things don’t happen in a vacuum. Her behaviour was influenced by her surroundings; her surroundings being Tom. Neither want to divorce, which is why they find themselves each week in a pub, across the road from their counsellor’s door, hoping to find solutions to these cross words.


The back and forth between the two is tart without being heightened. This isn’t Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Rather: Why don’t you give Virginia Woolf A Go? Your Taste Is A Bit Ho-Hum, Humdrum. Just Read Something Different For A Change. More like that. In a middle episode Louise reveals the loneliness of being undesired, explaining, ‘Sex is the one thing that separates you from everyone else in my life.’ Tom’s response is devastating: ‘Well nearly everyone anyway.’ It seems that he can’t get over her affair with Matthew, a fling that wasn’t born out of passion but a need for solace. A sexual misadventure that wasn't about the thing between the legs, but the consequent arm around the shoulder. Both characters are islands, sex the ocean that separates, neither as yet have the answers on how to reach one another.

The programme isn't like this.

Although there are hard questions, we see the spark that brought the pair together early on. Waiting for their session, they see the therapist’s prior appointment leave. Observing them arguing, Tom and Louise provide commentary and analysis, forecasting what the trouble may be. This is a clever device from Hornby as it allows for some levity in earlier episodes when the pain of the couple is all too raw. As the weeks go by and the sessions increase, the couple grow a little more playful, perhaps out of kamikaze spirit, aware that their boat is heading for the rocks, regardless of what they say or do; if all is lost, why not laugh against the dying light. It’s here that the programme moves into The Trip territory with witty rallies between the two. 

Episode six has them imagining life without each other: Louise supposes that Tom would end up with a Naomi, a café owner who missed her chance at children because of a feckless boyfriend. Tom, on the other hand, imagines Louise with a Colin, Roger or Nigel (even the humour is pointed: he sees himself as exciting in comparison to the types of men that Louise is more suited too). Louise notes the barb and challenges. Tom returns with, ‘You wouldn’t turn your nose up at Colin Firth, Roger Federer or – Nigel Kennedy.’ Louise laughs at the last, so Tom offers an alternative. ‘Or Nigel de Jong – he’s a Dutch footballer; he studded a Spanish player in the chest right up here. Terrible challenge.’ Louise isn’t sold. Tom: ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t be like that at home.’ Even though socially and culturally the two are from different places, in terms of humour they’re entwined.

O'Dowd and Pike (Photo: BBC)

Once the programme settled into its groove I had so much regard for it. I knew Rosamund Pike was a terrific actor, yet I wasn’t aware of O’Dowd's talent. There are moments that call for erudite Irish charm – O’Dowd’s calling card – however the role demands a well of emotions: jealousy, loneliness and selfishness. This performance will surely lead to more dramatic roles in the future. The only thing that didn’t work for me at times were the analogies. One episode has them liken their relationship to Brexit, another Syria, another dolphins – these are very well written; the issue is you can hear the writing. Where State Of The Union is best is where it feels quick, improvised, free from artifice. This occurs more and more as you go through the series so it becomes less like a play and more like a conversation we’re sitting in on.


State Of The Union is a study of what marriage means after the confetti stops. Watching it with my wife it had me considering our future, and the hope that whatever life throws our way I remember there is power in a union.

State Of The Union is on Sunday 10pm, BBC 2 or the series is available on iPlayer.