It started with a Facebook ping. Two people in their seventies, Celia and Alan, find each other after sixty years apart. They get coffee. They fall in love. It sounds like the setup for a Hallmark card, doesn't it? But Sally Wainwright doesn't do Hallmark. If you've spent any time in the windswept, rain-slicked valleys of West Yorkshire, you know life there is a bit more rugged than a greeting card. Last Tango in Halifax took that simple "late-life romance" premise and turned it into a sprawling, messy, hilarious, and often devastating family saga that redefined what BBC drama could look like.
Honestly, it’s the lack of polish that makes it work.
Most TV shows about older people treat them like they’re made of glass or, worse, like they’re just there to dispense wisdom to the "actual" protagonists. Not here. Alan and Celia are impulsive. They’re sometimes selfish. They have huge, screaming rows about politics and class and things that happened in 1953. Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi play them with such vitality that you forget they’re playing "octogenarians." They’re just people. And the baggage they bring? It’s heavy.
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The Chaos of the Buttershaw and Dawson Clans
You can't talk about Last Tango in Halifax without talking about the daughters. Sarah Lancashire’s Caroline and Nicola Walker’s Gillian are the twin engines of the show’s anxiety. On paper, they shouldn't work as a duo. Caroline is a high-flying, Oxford-educated headmistress living in a massive house; Gillian is a widow working a farm, covered in sheep muck and dealing with a string of terrible men.
They are sisters-in-law by marriage, but their bond becomes the show’s emotional center.
Wainwright has this incredible knack for writing dialogue that feels like a real family dinner. People talk over each other. They make inappropriate jokes during tragedies. They hold grudges for three seasons over a comment made in the first episode. Look at Caroline’s arc—her coming out in her fifties was handled with zero melodrama and 100% awkward reality. It wasn't a "very special episode." It was just her life. She was terrified of what her mother, Celia, would think. And rightly so. Celia’s reaction wasn't a quick "I love you anyway" hug; it was a complicated, bigoted, slow-burn adjustment that felt painfully real for a woman of her generation.
Then you have Gillian.
Gillian is a disaster. A lovable, hardworking, deeply haunted disaster. The revelation about what really happened to her husband, Eddie, changed the entire tone of the series. It moved the show from a light comedy-drama into something much darker, flirting with the edges of a thriller without ever losing its groundedness. That’s the magic trick Sally Wainwright performs. She can have a character confess to a decades-old crime in one scene and have the family arguing about the quality of a teapot in the next.
Why the Yorkshire Setting Isn't Just Background
Location matters. If this show took place in London, it would be a totally different beast. The Calder Valley—with its steep hills, frequent flooding, and gray stone—shapes the characters. When the floods hit in the later seasons, it wasn't just a plot device. It was a reflection of the constant, uphill struggle these characters face.
Wainwright, who also gave us Happy Valley and Gentleman Jack, writes Yorkshire with a specific kind of love. It’s a place where people are blunt. They don't use ten words when two will do. Alan, played by Jacobi, is the personification of this. He’s gentle and kind, but he has a spine of steel and a very "get on with it" attitude. It’s a stark contrast to the heightened, glossy dramas we usually get from US imports.
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The Reality of Late-Life Marriage
The show gets a lot of praise for its representation of the elderly, but let's be specific about why it’s good. It doesn't ignore the physical reality of aging, but it doesn't make it the only story. Alan and Celia have a sex life. They have jealousy. They have deep-seated ideological differences.
In the later seasons, particularly Season 5, we see the cracks. The honeymoon phase of their late-life reunion wears off. They realize they don't actually know each other that well. Celia wants to spend money on expensive kitchens; Alan wants to keep his feet on the ground and work a part-time job at a supermarket just to stay busy. It’s a brilliant deconstruction of the "happily ever after" trope. They found each other again, yes. But then they had to actually live together.
Key Themes That Kept Us Watching:
- Class Friction: The tension between Caroline’s "posh" world and Gillian’s farm reality never truly goes away.
- The Weight of the Past: Secrets from the 1950s have a way of poisoning the present.
- Parent-Child Role Reversal: Watching Caroline and Gillian try to "parent" their aging parents is a source of both comedy and heartbreak.
- Resilience: No matter how many cars get crashed or marriages fail, the family stays in orbit around each other.
Is There More Coming?
This is the question every fan asks. After the short four-episode run of Season 5 in 2020, things went quiet. Sally Wainwright is one of the busiest writers in the UK. She’s been tied up with Happy Valley’s explosive finale and The Ballad of Renegade Nell.
But here’s the thing: she’s never officially closed the door on Last Tango in Halifax.
The actors have all expressed interest in returning. Derek Jacobi and Anne Reid have a chemistry that you just don't throw away. However, as time passes, the nature of the show would have to change. Our lead actors are in their late eighties and early nineties now. Any future return would likely have to grapple with the ultimate reality of Alan and Celia’s story—the end of it. It’s a sobering thought, but given how honestly the show has handled everything else, they would probably do it beautifully.
What We Can Learn From the Buttershaws
If you're looking for a takeaway from this show, it’s that it is never, ever too late to blow up your life for a chance at happiness. Alan and Celia took a massive risk. They were "settled" in their lonely lives, and they chose chaos instead.
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It’s also a masterclass in forgiveness. Not the easy, cinematic kind of forgiveness, but the hard kind. The kind where you still disagree with someone’s lifestyle or their choices, but you show up to their house with a bottle of wine because they’re family.
How to Revisit the Series
If you’re planning a rewatch or diving in for the first time, keep an eye on the background characters. The grandkids—Raff and Lawrence—grow up before our eyes, and their development mirrors the shifts in their parents’ lives.
- Watch for the subtext in the kitchen scenes. Most of the biggest life shifts happen while someone is making tea or buttering toast.
- Listen to the music. The folk-inspired score by Ian Arber and the use of the song "Unforgettable" aren't just fluff; they anchor the show's nostalgia.
- Pay attention to the silence. Some of the most powerful moments between Alan and Celia are the ones where they aren't saying anything at all.
Last Tango in Halifax isn't just a "nice" show for a Sunday night. It's a gritty, funny, and deeply human exploration of what it means to be alive and still looking for connection, no matter how many candles are on the cake. It’s a reminder that we are all, at any age, a work in progress.
To get the most out of your viewing experience, watch the series in order without skipping the "holiday specials," which contain crucial plot developments often ignored by casual viewers. Pay close attention to the shift in cinematography between the first and last seasons; the show grows more visually sophisticated as the internal lives of the characters become more complex. If you're a fan of British drama, compare Wainwright’s work here to her writing in Happy Valley to see how she uses the same Yorkshire landscape to tell vastly different stories about the same human resilience.