Hurt So Good:Mr Loverman.

Barrington 'Barry' Walker (Lennie James) is a dapper seventy-four year old man. He drinks rum, he dances to reggae, and he's also gay. His wife, Carmel (Sharon D. Clarke) knows that he drinks rum and she knows that he dances to reggae but she doesn't know he's gay. His best friend Morris (Ariyon Bakare) does though - and that's because Barry and Morris are lovers and have been all their adult lives.

Mr Loverman (BBC1/iPlayer, directed by Hong Khaou, and based on a book by Bernardine Evaristo) is a moving, powerful, emotional, funny - in places, and serious - at times, look at Barry's life both with Morris and with his family. It's a very easy show to get into and each of the characters is so well drawn that you feel almost as if you know them personally from the off.

Carmel knows, or believes, that Barry is being unfaithful but not with another man. She thinks he's putting his "thing" about with "trampy cows" and sticking his "business" into any "smelly venereal baggy pussy" and Barry's favourite daughter Maxine (Tamara Lawrence) is worried her dad is on the verge of tearing the family apart.

Though she doesn't know why and she certainly doesn't know that she, and sister Donna (Sharlene Whyte), are the reason he's not yet left Carmel. That and an understandable lack of courage on his part. Barry tells Morris he will leave Carmel (and move to Miami with him) but we soon learn that that's not the first time he's made that pledge and as he has, quite clearly, failed to act on it in the past how can anyone be sure he will now.

It's not easy for him to come out. A West Indian man of a certain age who grew up in a time of explicit, commonplace, and often violent homophobia. Carmel's church going friends, Miss Merty (Hopi Grace) and Miss Drusilla (Llewella Gideon), are more than happy to use scripture to justify their vicious homophobia. To them a gay man is an 'anti-man'.

Carmel's views are only marginally less unenlightened and, initially, it's hard to warm to her but we soon learn her back story (including her own brief fling with co-worker Reuben (Lochlann O'Mearain)) and that helps, a little, when it comes to feeling empathy towards her character. To be fair to her, her husband has forced her to live a lie for half a century.

Maxine's got her own stuff going on (she's struggling to make it in the fashion business and is getting into debt) and both her and Donna are dating, albeit with very different expectations from the experience. Donna tells her date that "marriage is nothing but a vehicle for female oppression" and Maxine forgets the name of her one night stand after he's brought her breakfast in bed.

Donna's also a single mother and dotes on her teenage son Daniel (Tahj Miles). Daniel, for his part, loves his mum but finds her a bit much and is torn between rapping for a drill act and going to either Oxford or Harvard. It also seems he may share some personality traits with Barry. Personality traits that neither of them would find easy to speak about.

Each episode starts with a quote from the likes of Plato, Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde, and Claudia Jones while both Shakespeare (who Barry likes to quote to show off) and James Baldwin are given two each, location wise, if you know London (Hackney particularly) there will be lots to recognise in the form of the Hackney Empire, Ridley Road market, Hackney Town Hall, the Regent's Canal, Kingsland Road, and a token south of the river site in Battersea's Boqueria tapas bar, and there's a fabulous soundtrack with music from Neneh Cherry, The Drifters, Prefab Sprout, Susan Cadogan (hence the blog title), Arthur Russell, and Hak Baker's excellent Venezuela Riddim.

As the eight episodes play out we have one devoted almost entirely to Carmel's trip back to Antigua to say goodbye to a family member, lots of Barry's internal monologue delivered Peep Show style, and there are flashbacks to younger days (young Barry and Carmel are played by Keenan Munn-Francis and Lauren Akosia) where entire life stories are played out, and we learn what happened to Barry's wife Odette (Suzette Llewellyn) and his family. Something that proves key to the development of the drama.

Everyone in it is brilliant but Lennie James is exceptional, a small movement in his eye can speak volumes about what he's feeling, as the frustrating but lovable Barry, a man who claims he's not a homosexual but a 'Barrysexual', a man who hasn't the first clue how to do even the most basic of household chores, and a man who has lived an entire adult life not telling the truth to his wife, his children, or, sometimes, even himself.

Mr Loverman isn't shy when it comes to shining a torch on historical, and contemporary, homophobia and it builds and builds into an incredibly tense final couple of episodes where the emotion is chillingly raw. Yet, despite there being much sadness, positivity always seems likely to win out and the show, ultimately, has a positive message. Be true to your feelings, be true to your friends and family, and be true to yourself.