Him & Her and Mum creator explains why he doesn’t plan on returning to comedy

This article contains mention of pregnancy loss and miscarriage that some readers may find distressing.

Screenwriter Stefan Golaszewski first became known to the public for his acclaimed comedies, Him & Her and Marriage. This was after starting out as part of a comedy troupe, Cowards, which also included Tim Key, Tom Basden and Lloyd Woolf.

In 2022, Golaszewski transferred into drama, writing the four-part BBC series, Marriage. Now, he's back with another drama, the hard-hitting six-part series, Babies, which follows a couple who experience multiple pregnancy losses and miscarriages.

Speaking with us exclusively for our video interview series The Radio Times Writers' Room, in which we get to know what makes screenwriters tick, Golaszewski spoke about Cowards, and revealed that while they still "keep in touch", a professional reunion seems unlikely.

"There was no reason we stopped other than that we all started doing other things," he said. "But I'm not sure I'll be writing comedy again anytime soon, so it's unlikely that I would."

When asked why he moved away from comedy, and whether it was a purposeful trajectory for his shows to become more dramatic at the time, he said: "What's happened is, when I came to the end of Mum, I suppose I found with comedy that there's a limit on the level of truth that you can tell because of the nature of the form and the audience's expectation of it.

"And I found myself hitting my head on a ceiling as a writer, so I moved into drama to kind of get away from that ceiling."

Him & Her ran for four seasons between 2010 and 2013 on BBC Three, and starred Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani. Meanwhile, Mum starred Lesley Manville and Peter Mullan and ran for three seasons between 2016 and 2019.

During his chat for The Radio Times Writers' Room, Golaszewski also broke down where the story for Babies came from and what viewers can expect from the series which stars Paapa Essiedu and Siobhán Cullen.

"Babies is a love story about a couple going through pregnancy loss," he said. "It's not autobiographical, but I have been through some of the issues in the show, and as such, I was very much aware of a hole that could be filled in the conversation about these things, and of the positivity that could be gained by ripping the plaster off and revealing the wound.

"And that positivity being for the people going through it, who might feel very alone, and also so that people have an understanding, and when someone says to them that they've had a miscarriage or whatever, that hopefully the show would give them some understanding of what that actually means, because it gets medicalised, as opposed to treated as grief.

"So that was kind of the impetus, really."

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Babies is available to watch in full on iPlayer now. Stefan Golaszewski's full interview for The Radio Times Writers' Room is be available to watch on Radio Times.

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