Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio 4,08 Mar 2023,28 mins

Series Series 4

4. Every Little Thing

Conversations from a Long Marriage

Available for over a year

Jan Etherington’s award-winning comedy about a long-married couple in love with life and each other. Starring Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam. It seems everything is making Roger grumpy, including a neighbour putting out his bin on the wrong day; a car alarm in the night and a shortage of streaky bacon. Roger claims he’s ‘normal’ because ‘most men live lives of quiet desperation’ but Joanna discovers it’s her fault he’s feeling fed up. Producer: Claire Jones A BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in March 2023. **** Conversations from a Long Marriage won Voice of the Listener & Viewer Award for Best Radio Comedy in 2020. * ‘Sitcom is what most marriages are really like – repetitive and ridiculous – and Jan’s words are some of the best ever written on the subject’ RICHARD CURTIS ‘* This gives me hope that life and marriage might permanently include taking the absolute piss while simultaneously dancing in the kitchen’. EMMA FREUD * ‘Can Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam ever have done anything better than Jan Etherington’s two hander? Sublimely funny, touching… This is a work of supreme craftsmanship.’ SIMON O’HAGAN, RADIO TIMES * ‘An endearing portrait of exasperation, laced with hard won tolerance – and something like love.’ THE GUARDIAN * ‘The delicious fruit of the writer, Jan Etherington’s experience of writing lots of TV and radio, blessed by being acted by Joanna Lumley and Roger Allam. This series makes people laugh’ GILLIAN REYNOLDS. SUNDAY TIMES * ‘You’ve been listening at my window, Jan’. JOANNA LUMLEY

Programme Website
More episodes