Last Tango in Halifax dances on.
One of television's most daring dramas launches its brief four-episode new season Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings).
At the risk of a mild spoiler, things are not all going well for Alan Buttershaw (Derek Jacobi, top) and his wife Celia (Anne Reid, top).
As fans know, that's not really a spoiler at all. The charm of Last Tango, from the beginning, has been that it has never suggested charm is enough.
The show revolves around the late-in-life romance between Alan and Celia, who almost had a relationship in their teens and then reconnected in their 70s when both have lost long-time spouses.
They find the old spark and marry, which, with two splendid and likeable actors in Jacobi and Reid, sounds like a lock for a celebration of happily ever after.
Instead, Last Tango takes a detour and finds the land mines as well as the roses. Ever since we got past the giddy thrill of the new relationship, it has explored that relationship in a notably unsentimental way.
That is to say senior love is much like love at any age, its pleasures balanced against the parallel discovery of the ways in which any two human beings will see the world differently.
As Last Tango enters its fourth U.S. season, which is officially Season 5 in the U.K., Alan and Celia have been married seven years, and some of the things that were not issues in the earlier years have begun to simmer a bit more openly.
In keeping with the unblinking nature of Sally Wainwright's scripts, Celia has not always behaved or spoken admirably. She has passive-aggressive tendencies and strong, sometimes not compassionate, opinions.
Alan, who initially seemed to be the quintessential nice guy who was finally finishing first, turns out to have some unflattering secrets in his past. When they surface, they complicate everything.
Perhaps most significantly, both Alan and Celia have daughters, and those daughters, while we like them, bring multiple issues into everyone's lives.
Alan's daughter Gillian (Nicola Walker) struggles to run a farm almost single-handedly. She has an infinite capacity for hard work and an uncanny ability to make every possible wrong decision when it comes to her personal life.
Meanwhile, Celia's daughter Caroline (Sarah Lancashire), having lost her partner Kate as a result of being hit by a car, is raising their daughter.
Caroline's ex John (Tony Gardner) and his partner Judith (Ronni Ancona) continue to play a prominent and often disruptive role as the new season begins. Non-spoiler: Judith becomes more successful in her writing and less responsible in her drinking.
The issues that arise at the start of the new season aren't as seismic – or, okay, soapish – as some of those from the past couple of seasons. They center more on everyday matters, like money.
That doesn't make those issues any less threatening to relationships, starting with Alan's and Celia's, particularly now that the first wave of romance is no longer washing over and smoothing out the rough patches.
Jacobi and Reid have created characters we like in spite of some troubling traits, and Last Tango has found endearing rom-com elements in a story that doesn't revolve around young beauties and acknowledges that love and affection often must survive friction.
It's a dance we don't often see choreographed so well.