Radio Times: Review by:; Alison Graham

Cheerful Jack-the-lad Joe returns home to Manchester after a year-long trip around the world. We learn that he was propelled into crossing continents after his sweet girlfriend Lucy told him, very nicely, that she would quite like to settle down and have kids.

Having read that sentence you’ll probably want to leave them just to get on with it because Joe (Downton’s wicked butler Rob James-Collier) is obviously a callow, lairy, commitment-phobic jerk and Lucy (Andrea Lowe) a whiny girly. In fact, for the first 20 minutes or so Love Life does little to disabuse us of either of these impressions, but it’s worth hanging on, because it turns into a rather sweet, soft-centred, romantic drama.

Love Life, written by Lark Rise to Candleford’s Bill Gallagher, is helped greatly by the leads, particularly Lowe, and by Alexander Armstrong and Sophie Thompson as husband and wife Dominic (Lucy’s former boss) and Penny, a couple lost in a well of their own unhappiness.

About this programme

1/3. Joe returns from a year abroad and is shocked to find his former partner Lucy is pregnant and will not say who the father is. Joe learns it is her married boss Dominic, whose wife is having trouble conceiving, and confronts him about it. Drama, starring Rob James-Collier, Andrea Lowe, Alexander Armstrong and Gregor Fisher.