Your middle-aged friend starts dating your daughter - drama explores what happens next

For years, Nicola Walker has played detectives, lawyers and women holding analyzable lives together. But her latest relation successful comedy-drama Alice and Steve whitethorn beryllium the closest she's travel to playing herself.

The six-part series, written by Sophie Goodhart and co-starring Jemaine Clement, begins with a friendship-shattering premise. Alice (Walker) discovers her champion person Steve (Clement) is dating her 26-year-old daughter, Izzy. What follows is portion drama and portion affectional warfare arsenic 2 middle-aged friends spiral into a conflict of resentment, jealousy and revenge.

The show's cardinal dilemma whitethorn beryllium extreme, but erstwhile asked however she would respond successful Alice's shoes, Walker says the parenting emotions astatine its bosom consciousness precise familiar.

"My lad is older and has had a fewer relationships and, arsenic a mother, each 1 is unexpected," she tells BBC News.

"It's truly hard going from having implicit power of them arsenic this tiny entity who believes everything you accidental and, successful their eyes, you're large astatine everything.

"Then they go teenagers, they commencement bringing radical location they tendency and it's a monolithic parenting shift."

The challenge, she says, is learning erstwhile not to intervene.

"You person to conscionable support your rima shut, which is the other of what Alice does.

"You person to go bovine, my person told me. You person to conscionable spell 'mm-hmm, mm-hmm' and behave similar a ample cattle astir them, conscionable pretending to agree," she laughs.

It's possibly nary astonishment past that Walker feels a adjacent transportation to Alice.

Despite playing everything from detective Cassie Stuart successful Unforgotten to divorcement lawyer Hannah Stern successful The Split, she says this is the quality who feels astir similar her.

"I'm ever playing Alice successful each occupation I've ever done," she says. "I deliberation Alice is nearer to maine than anyone other I've ever played."

She explains that it's due to the fact that she has the aforesaid "rage" arsenic her and "being a genitor drives you wholly loopy - but you would bash thing for your children, truthful I recognize the basics of her personality".

That relatability is portion of what makes Alice much than conscionable an overbearing genitor as, down the chaos and comedy, she's a pistillate struggling to judge that her girl is making choices she tin nary longer control.

Steve, too, is much analyzable than the show's premise initially suggests.

While audiences whitethorn presume he's simply a middle-aged antheral dating a overmuch younger woman, Clement says helium was drawn to the quality due to the fact that of the struggle astatine the bosom of him.

"What makes Steve quality is struggle wrong yourself - helium has thing helium truly wants, which is thing helium shouldn't do, and that's a large struggle erstwhile you're acting."

The Kiwi histrion adds that helium suspects galore viewers volition marque up their minds astir Steve earlier they've adjacent watched the bid and "assume he's a sleazy guy".

But some actors reason the amusement is little funny successful assigning blasted than exploring an uncomfortable concern from aggregate perspectives.

"The writer is cautious to amusement you that if it wasn't Alice's daughter, these 2 radical mightiness person a bully relationship," says Walker. "It's hard to constituent the digit astatine immoderate 1 quality and springiness them blame."

That refusal to formed anyone arsenic a clear-cut villain is thing critics person highlighted successful their reviews.

In its four-star review, Radio Times described Alice and Steve arsenic an "impressively wrong-footing play astir emotion and hate", praising its quality to equilibrium crisp drama with much poignant themes.

The reappraisal called it a "true hatred story" and noted that "while the romanticist narration is the staging constituent for each the melodramatic tension, the much absorbing communicative is astir the relationship it's destroying".

Rather than asking audiences to take sides, Alice and Steve repeatedly challenges them to sympathise with radical making decisions they mightiness not hold with.

That's surely what Walker and Clement are hoping for.

"People judge they cognize wherever it's going but we tin committedness them it doesn't spell wherever you think. The writer is overmuch amended than that," says Walker.

Clement agrees: "Neither of america predicted what would hap astatine the end."

The bid besides taps into wider conversations astir age-gap relationships and the mode they are perceived.

Clement, champion known for What We Do successful the Shadows and Flight of the Conchords, says helium thinks radical "would beryllium harsher if it was an older pistillate with a younger man".

Walker, meanwhile, says 1 of the things she loved astir astir the script, written by Sex Education and Rivals writer Sophie Goodhart, is its portrayal of ageing.

"There's nary self-pity successful Alice by the extremity and I don't deliberation I've ever work that coming from an older pistillate before. It's ever layered with, 'I've inactive got it'. But I emotion the honesty of a pistillate saying, 'I'm done and it's not my time, it's their time'."

As for what proposal they would springiness modern daters, some admit they whitethorn beryllium retired of touch.

"We haven't dated for a while," Clement laughs, earlier yet settling connected 1 suggestion: "Go to the cinema."

Walker is adjacent little convinced she should beryllium offering guidance.

"My proposal is pointless," she says. "I'm keeping my rima shut."

Given everything she's conscionable said astir parenting, possibly that's a acquisition Alice could person benefited from too.

Alice and Steve is disposable to ticker connected Disney+ from 8 June.