Paris, Venice and Barcelona are on the itinerary when a married couple on the verge of breakup take a European vacation with their rebellious teenage son. Tom Hollander (Baptiste) and Saskia Reeves (Roadkill) star as Douglas and Connie, a hopelessly mismatched husband and wife, with Tom Taylor (The Dark Tower) as Albie, their moody offspring.
The story opens in suburban Britain, with Douglas and Connie twenty years into their marriage. He is a left-brain type – a scientist – organized, numerical, and obsessively rational. Meanwhile, she is an artist with her right brain firing on all cylinders – visual, creative, unconventional. Out of the blue one night, she wakes up Douglas to announce, “I’ve been thinking about leaving. I think our marriage might be over.”
It’s news to Douglas, who has been blindly contented with matrimony. He immediately decides to change his ways in order to change her mind. She agrees that they should at least go ahead with their planned European holiday, designed to introduce art-school-bound Albie to the glories of continental culture. At seventeen, he is not exactly thrilled to be doing the tourist beat with his parents.
Yet all three embark on a grand tour – three weeks, six countries, twelve cities – that is less about museums, monuments, and cafes than how family members can’t help driving each other over the edge. The contentious incidents abroad are interspersed with flashbacks to happier days, showing how Douglas and Connie met and fell in love, despite their differences. These scenes also reveal a long-ago tragedy that bonds the couple, and that has deeply affected Albie.
Adapted from David Nicholls’ Booker Prize-nominated novel, Us airs in two two-hour episodes on Sundays, June 20 and 27 at 8 p.m. on Panhandle PBS.
