WHEN junior Tory minister Robin Hesketh (Alex Jennings) returns to his idyllic Cotswolds home after a busy summer week in Parliament, he finds foxes making a mess of his garden and his unhappy, drink-sodden wife Diana (Lindsay Duncan), ready to do some destructive emotional digging of her own.

Over the course of an hour-and-a-half without interval, the two sixty-somethings pick, poke and provoke as they range over familiar argumentative territory maritally.

Yet gradually, and at Diana’s insistence, the old, well-rehearsed topics give way to new ones that have lain unconsidered for many years, leading to a dramatic and heartbreaking revelation about a painful incident from the past.