TELEVISION / BRIEFING: Breaking up is hard to do

The schedules continue to be influenced by the philosophy that nothing succeeds like sex. The BBC's latest fancy-tickler is a four-parter on ADULTERY (9.45pm BBC 2) that has had the tabloids drooling. They might, however, be disappointed by the first episode. In Ray Gosling's sensitive hands the raunchiness is very much restrained. Sure, we are treated to a tale of health club wife-swapping, during which Gosling discards his woolly hat and joins his naked interviewee in a pool; but on the whole the brave participants in Tamasin Day-Lewis's 'Breaking Up' concentrate on the pain rather than the pleasure. Claudette, a sparky Liverpudlian with a sketchy grasp of the marriage vows ('What's mine let no man come asunder') talks amusingly about her wild youth with Scandinavian seamen: 'The cover of the book had to appeal to me, never mind the reading.' But she movingly looks back on the split with her adulterous husband, reflecting after 21 years of marriage: 'Sex is when two people come together, become one. You're supposed to stay there, not go outside and share it with Tom, Dick or Harry.' Probing without prurience.

(Photograph omitted)