Airdate: Freezing

Next week ABC introduces us to ‘Matt and Elizabeth’ a mid-life couple who both find themselves without much work and forced to spend too much time together at home.

In the BBC comedy Freezing, Hugh Bonneville (Iris, Doctor Zhivago, Tipping The Velvet) plays a retrenched publisher while Elizabeth McGovern (Once Upon a Time in America, Ragtime) is an American actress who can’t get a decent gig. The tone of the comedy is quite understated, so it will be interesting to see how it fares at 9pm Wednesdays from next week.

Also appearing are Richard E. Grant (Posh Nosh, Gosford Park, Withnail and I) and Joely Richardson (Nip / Tuck) as themselves.

Press Release:
Freezing is a contemporary, relationship comedy – full of heart – about a couple living and working from home together. And about what a nightmare that is.

Hugh Bonneville (Iris, Doctor Zhivago, Tipping The Velvet) and Elizabeth McGovern (Once Upon a Time in America, Ragtime) star as Matt and Elizabeth, a middle-aged couple who should be in the prime of their lives, but instead find themselves jobless, forced to spend 24 hours at home in each other’s company and driving each other crazy!

Elizabeth is an Oscar-nominated actress, but her film work has dried up and now she wonders where the next job will come from.

Matt has just been replaced by his assistant at the publishing firm where he worked for 15 years. As a result – and for the first time in their marriage – Matt and Elizabeth now have to spend their days together at home – two freelancers seeking work.

As domestic tensions at home rise, the pair undertake varied (and frequently desperate) attempts to relaunch themselves in their respective careers – all the while fighting off the growing realisation that they’re no longer perceived as young or desirable. By anyone.

Neither of them is helped by Leon – Elizabeth’s ultra aggressive agent and Matt’s oldest friend. Or by any of their still successful friends (the real-life stars making cameo appearances as themselves – Richard E Grant and Joely Richardson)

Freezing is a modern urban comedy about what happens when fame and promise start to fade away. It’s about the pressure on a relationship when one of them has given up their country to be with the other. And it’s about the dreadful people and priorities of media land.

Freezing premieres 9pm Wednesday August 6 and will be repeated on ABC2 – Thursday, August 07 at 8:30pm.