Who is grayling in the split?
Viewers can expect to see Hannah battling to build the firm’s most prolific case yet, when she attempts to help Fi Hansen (Donna Air) get out of her toxic marriage with controlling husband Richie Hansen (Ben Bailey Smith).
Defoe matriarch Ruth will fight to find her place at the newly merged law firm Noble Hale Defoe, and Hannah and Christie are set to continue with their affair, as she struggles to forgive Nathan for cheating on her.
But what happened in the first series? Here’s a recap of the key plot points ahead of the season premiere on BBC One.
Hannah Stern (played by Nicola Walker) has left the family law firm Defoe’s to join rivals Noble and Hale, which is run by a former protegee of her mother, Zander.
She’s married to Nathan Stern (Stephen Mangan), also a divorce lawyer, with whom she has three children.
During the series, she fights an ongoing case for Goldie (Meera Syal). Goldie is shocked to have divorce proceedings sprung on her by her multi-millionaire husband (Stephen Tompkinson). Slowly, it emerges that he’s not only been having an affair with Goldie’s best friend, but also fathered a child with her, who is now 10 years old. Hannah also fights for the girlfriend of a famous footballer to sign a prenup ahead of marrying him,and on behalf of the ex-wife of a comedian – who just so happens to catch the eye of her sister and Defoe’s lawyer, Nina.
Hannah’s own romantic life is far from perfect. Her marriage is rocked after it is revealed that her husband Nathan is on a list of men signed up to extra-marital “dating” site Indiana Ray – and has had an affair with a woman he met on there during a business trip. We leave series one wondering whether she will give in to her urge to pursue a relationship with old flame and current colleague, Dutch lawyer Christie Carmichael.
Hannah, Nina and Rose’s parents, Oscar and Ruth, started the firm Defoe’s decades previously. The girls, now adults, have not seen their father since he left the family home and fled to America with their then-24-year-old nanny Maya, leaving Ruth to raise them alone and run the business.
Just in time for Ruth’s 70th birthday, Oscar returns to demand his financial share of the company. He attempts to rebuild his relationship with his daughters to little success, before they realise that he had been trying to make contact with them for years. They find out that their mother had been intercepting the letters and presents he sent every year and kept them all in trunks in her bedroom.
Admitting that Defoe’s is in serious financial trouble, Ruth agrees to accept a takeover bid from Noble and Hale on the condition that she retires her role in the firm. The new company is called Noble, Hale & Defoe.
Over time, the family reconcile, and Oscar and Maya, who are still together, attend the wedding of his youngest, Rose, to James.
Sadly, a day after the wedding, Oscar dies of a heart attack.
Super slick lawyer Christie works for Noble & Hale. He’s known Hannah since they were at university, and had an affair with her ahead of her marriage to Nathan.
At the time, he tried to convince her not to marry Nathan and to run away with him on the morning of her wedding instead. She doesn’t turn up, and years later, he’s not given up on her.
The series sees him confront his ex-wife, now pregnant with another man’s child, as well as discovering Nathan is on the Indiana Ray list.
By the end of the final episode, Hannah has once again fled her family home for Christie’s flat and spends the night of Rose and James’ wedding with him.
After finding out her father has died, she asks Christie to stay at the law firm and cancel his plans to relocate to Chicago.
Nina Defoe (Annabel Scholey) , the party girl of the family, ends up dating her client, comedian Rex – but only after turning away a very drunk Christie from her door.
She later finds out she has been woven into his stand-up routine, as has her criminal habit of stealing expensive clothing from shops for the thrill of it.
Youngest Defoe Rose, the only sister who hasn’t followed their parents’ footsteps into the legal profession, is set to marry her long-term love, James.
But she gets cold feet along the way, and accidentally gropes the vicar set to marry them.
Rose and James part ways over the ordeal after Nina drunkenly blurts it out at a family dinner. However, after a brief separation, they get back together and the wedding gets back underway.
The first episode of series two of The Split will air on BBC One at 21.00 on Tuesday 11 February 2020. It will be available to view on BBC iplayer shortly afterwards
It feels like it’s been going at least 50 years, partly because it survives on just half a dozen endlessly repeated stories, but also due to the fact its shrill tone, right-on agenda and obsession with long-suffering, alcoholic women and spineless men has been copied by almost every other mainstream drama on TV.
Take, for instance, last night, where you had the choice of ITV’s Liar or BBC1’s The Split.
Such a miserable offering, I flipped a coin, lost and ended up watching The Split.
If you haven’t suffered like I have, I should explain this is basically just a middle-class version of EastEnders set in a family law firm run by matriarch Ruth and her daughters, who are straight from central soap casting.
There’s Nina, the hot one, an alcoholic shoplifter who can’t get a bloke.
And there’s Hannah, who’s as plain as an envelope and has men fighting over her in the street.
There is another one as well, Rose, who can’t get pregnant.
But writer Abi Morgan hasn’t the faintest idea what to do with her, so the drama tends to revolve around the miserable-as-sin Hannah, played by Nicola Walker, who’s been having the least steamy affair in television history with a walking Grolsch advert called Christie Carmichael.
They bonded over a mutual love of swimming and legal jargon and now refer to their encounters as “Grayling,” like it was a Prohibited Steps Order.
He’s a bit of a git, obviously. As is pretty much everyone else on The Split.
The only other ones you really need bother about, though, are the firm’s dandyish boss Zander, whose spirit animal is Rupert The Bear.
His partner, Tyler, who “specialises in mergers”, which I think is meant to sound sexy.
And Hannah’s unfaithful husband Nathan, played by Stephen Mangan, who’s thinking of getting it on with an office junior called Chloe who is not just the authentic voice of The Split but the entire BBC.
“I heard you speak at the Women In Law lunch,” she says, less than enticingly, at one point.
“Feminist perspectives on cross-examination. It was great.”
Yeah, it sounds like a total riot.
You feel for the actors, obviously. They’re constrained not just by the script and the EastEnders rules of drama, but by the subject matter as well.
In Walford, they at least have a small choice of storylines.
Here, there’s just one. Divorce, divorce and more divorce.
A slightly more savvy drama department would’ve given up on it after one series.
The Beeb just ploughs on, though, trying to jolly it along with some insanely annoying incidental music and a couple of guest stars. First time round we got Meera Syal (thanks for that).
This series, they’ve gone for broke and landed Donna Air off Byker Grove, who spends the duration of her screen time, as TV presenter Fi Hansen, looking like she’s got a particularly bad smell under her nose.
She thinks its disdain for her controlling screen husband, Richie.
We all know it looks more like contempt for the show, the plot and the script, which forces poor Nicola Walker to scream: “You have s**t, Nina.
We all have s**t.” And there’s another two weeks of this s**t to go.
Avoid avoid avoid.
MEANWHILE, on Liar, Laura Nielson: “I don’t know how Andrew Earlham died and I don’t care.”
Snap.
SHE’S McDonald, he’s Dodds. So together they are . . .
A right pain in the ar*e.
Tala Gouveia is ambitious, no-nonsense DCI Lauren McDonald, who’s come down to Bath, from London, saying things like: “I’m here for two years, tops. Don’t get attached to me.”
I won’t.
DS Dodds is her dorkish, time-serving partner, played by Jason Watkins, with a non-specific Yokel accent.
It could be Bath, it could be Ba’ath Party. The damn thing comes and goes, like the ad breaks, so it’s really hard to tell.
Bog-standard Sunday night brain rot, so far.
The real trouble here, though, is that as well as a lousy script and bonkers plot, McDonald & Dodds writer Robert Murphy has got a very PC political axe, which he grinds against multi-millionaire entrepreneur Max Crockett (Robert Lindsay in a Panama hat), who bears no physical resemblance to the Prime Minister.
However, he has got a surprisingly large number of children, a much younger pregnant wife and a way of quivering with rage about “the politics of envy” that leaves you in no doubt where all of Murphy’s prejudices lie.
The normal rules of quality drama and all the most self-important catch-up viewers dictate that spoilers are absolutely forbidden on a whodunnit.
So I’ve got no hesitation telling you it was Kasha, the lesbian, traveller waitress, who shot Max’s secret son, Seth.
Begone, McDonald & Dodds. You’re not wanted round these paaaarrrrrrts.
E4’S The Sex Clinic appears to have been created for all those young people who are just too needy, unattractive and shameless for Love Island, or even Embarrassing Bodies.
The result is a one-stop shop for every over-sharing berk and fantasist in the country.
All of them claim to have a sex life that would make Led Zeppelin blush.
The most serious problems the “expert medical team” have had to deal with so far, however, have included: Italian Marco, who had a mild case of genital warts, Essex girl Harriette, who wanted advice on “how to get wet” (move to Preston and don’t buy a brolly), and Francesca, who’s had over 100 partners but still felt the need to ask: “How do I make a man last longer in bed?” (Have you tried embalming them?).
Absolute shocker of the series, so far, though, was an un-captioned young woman, with brown hair, who for no good reason at all confessed: “I once tossed someone off on an aeroplane.”
What? Without a parachute? Disgusting.
"We're building towards a marriage," she told RadioTimes.com. "Whose marriage could it be? It could be anybody's, so I'm excited about that."
With two seasons of contentious separations, steamy affairs and unforgivable betrayals already under its belt, there's a lot to remember when it comes to The Split's previous plot lines.
If you don't have time to binge your way through the show's existing episodes, then not to fear – we've recapped the ending of season 2 for you.
Read on for everything you need to know about The Split season 2 ending.
The Split's second season ends with Hannah (Nicola Walker) and Nathan's (Stephen Mangan) marriage in jeopardy, Nina deciding to keep her baby after finding out she is pregnant and Zander marrying Tyler (Damien Molony).
Throughout season 2, Hannah found herself leading a double life romantically, being still married to Nathan but secretly having an affair with her colleague Christie (Barry Atsma). Unsurprisingly, Christie and Hannah's romance is revealed to all, with Nathan threatening to leave her.
While Hannah comes to the realisation that that she wants to stay with Nathan and make their relationship work, Nathan doesn't agree and they tell their kids that they are splitting up. He later returns to their home and packs up his belongings, with Hannah sobbing to her mother.
Meanwhile, Nina discovers that she's pregnant, with the father being her former client, comedian Rex Pope (Mathew Baynton). She meets up with Rex to speak about the baby, but after realising that he only came because his career is in decline and his relationship with his wife isn't going well, she leaves and decides to raise the baby by herself. She then attends Zander and Tyler's joint post-wedding stag do, but when Tyler thanks her for putting in a good work for him with Zander, they kiss.
As for the firm's legal cases, the main divorce at the centre of season 2 was that between TV presenter Fi Hansen (Donna Air) and her record producer husband Richie Hansen (Ben Bailey Smith). While Hannah was been representing Fi, Richie had hired Melanie Aickman as his representation and was threatening to ask for full custody of their children after a sex tape showing Fi, Richie and their nanny was leaked.
However, Hannah manages to convince Richie's personal assistant Ali to stand up against Richie and shortly afterwards, six women come out and accuse him of various sexual crimes. Hannah uses this as a bargaining chip to get Fi custody of her children.
Need a visual summary? Make sure to check out the BBC's three-minute recap of The Split seasons 1 and 2.
— Hannah gets a message from Christie about Grayling, Alaska. Moments later, Richie Hansen shows up outside to pick up his children. Fi and .
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