Stefan Golaszewski on Mum, Marriage and Babies: The Radio Times Writers’ Room

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

Welcome back to The Radio Times Writers' Room!

This time around, we're welcoming Stefan Golaszewski, the writer behind hit comedies such as Him & Her and Mum, as well as the new emotional BBC drama series Babies.

Golaszewski started out as part of the comedy troupe Cowards alongside Tim Key, Tom Basden and Lloyd Woolf, while his first one-off TV pilot, titled Things Talk, was released in 2009.

His series, Him & Her, aired on BBC Three between 2010 and 2013, running for four seasons. Starring Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani, the sitcom followed a lazy couple in their 20s, and before being commissioned was called "basically rubbish" and the worst script one script reader had come across.

Proving the doubters wrong, the series was a success, and Golaszewski returned to the BBC in 2016 for a new series, Mum, now on BBC Two. Starring Lesley Manville, the series ran for three seasons and was critically acclaimed, winning multiple awards and being nominated for even more.

Golaszewski's first foray into straight drama came in 2022, with a four-part series called Marriage, starring Nicola Walker and Sean Bean.

Despite receiving strong critical reviews, the series proved divisive upon its BBC One broadcast – something Golaszewski admits he should have expected, given that he purposefully wrote a show that "goes against all the norms of drama, and does it kind of wilfully and deliberately".

Now, Golaszewski, firmly in his drama era, is back with a new six-part series, Babies. Starring Paapa Essiedu and Siobhán Cullen, the series follows a couple in their thirties who are trying for a baby, and experience multiple pregnancy losses and miscarriages.

As well as Essiedu and Cullen, the series also stars Jack Bannon as Stephen's best friend, Dave, and Charlotte Riley as Dave's new girlfriend, Amanda. Stephen and Dave's friendship is tested throughout the series, as their lives and relationships take different routes.

During our chat, Golaszewski spoke about his specificity with dialogue, his thoughts on potentially taking on an adaptation or co-writing a series, and his experience trying to top up his foreign phone allowance so he could speak to Sean Bean.

He also spoke about why he can't imagine himself returning to comedy any time soon, and how Babies, along with many of his other series, explores communication in a way few dramas do.

"I think often, fiction portrays people as knowing what they feel and knowing how to talk about it," he said. "And I think the truth of the world is that we tend to not know what we feel and we've got no idea how to talk about it.

"With Babies, you're getting people at a certain time of their life, which is their early 30s. It's not true of everyone, obviously, but broadly, you could say that when you hit your early 30s, it's when the serious stuff starts to happen. People are married, potentially, or settling down into couples, potentially.

"Children are coming along, or the want of children. Careers start to happen, friendship groups start to separate, people start to move away, and the things that got you through your 20s and your teens start no longer to work. They're tools that no longer apply to the life that you're living."

Golaszewski continued: "And with Stephen and Lisa and with the characters in this show, they're trying to navigate a moment. They're trying to navigate that moment. So for Stephen and Lisa, it's baby loss, which has come completely out of the blue to them, and they're trying to work out how to speak, how to be in the context of this new life they have.

"And Dave, for example... my note to Jack about Dave was that he's probably most comfortable in a bar, because in a bar you don't actually have to say anything that means anything. It's just noise. The noise of a bar prevents any kind of actual conversation, and that's very good for someone like Dave, because it means you can just surf across the top of it.

"Whereas, he is now having to face the enormity of a child that he has no relationship with, and his friends all starting to move on without him.

"So the problems in communication in the show, I think, are to do with people trying to navigate the enormous things they feel inside them. And the only way we have, as humans, of navigating those things, is through words. And words aren't enough."

You can watch the full video at the top of this article right now, and look out for more trips to The Radio Times Writers' Room soon.

Next time, we will be chatting with Richard Gadd, the writer, actor and comedian best-known for creating smash hit, genre-bending Netflix series Baby Reindeer. He will be talking to us all about his new BBC and HBO series Half Man – don't miss it!

In the meantime, you can catch up with our previous chats with Mark Gatiss, Harry and Jack Williams, Noah Hawley, Neil Cross, Steven Knight, Chris Chibnall, Jack Thorne and Sarah Quintrell.

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Babies will air on Monday 30 March at 9pm on BBC One, and is available in full on iPlayer now.

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