Babies

Written and directed by multi-award-winning Stefan Golaszewski (Mum, Marriage, Him & Her), Babies is a gripping, warm and urgent love story about a couple struggling through the experience of pregnancy loss. Lisa and Stephen (30s) suffer multiple miscarriages, their hope heroic in the face of grief. As the audience yearns for them, roots for them, feels for them, there is always the glow of hope, humour and love.

The series also follows Amanda and Dave - a new couple navigating their own challenges and testing their compatibility. Their complex relationship, set against Lisa and Stephen’s ongoing pregnancy journey, begins to expose cracks in Stephen and Dave’s long-standing friendship.

Stefan Golaszewski introduces Babies below. 

Watch Babies on BBC iPlayer and BBC One from Monday 30th March

Can you outline the premise of the show for the audiences and what drew you to exploring this subject matter?

It's a love story about a couple going through the process of trying to have their first baby. Although it is not autobiographical, I have some personal experience of these issues, and I thought it was a good idea to create a show that talks about a subject that feels quite taboo, but that so many people go through in a painful secrecy.

Can you provide us with some background on each of the four main characters?

Stephen (Paapa Essiedu) is a kind, gentle soul who has some complications with his notions of masculinity. He loves Lisa (Siobhán Cullen) very much, and has had a well-oiled problem-free life up until this point. This is his first time experiencing tragedy. Lisa is a funny, clever, outgoing, confident person, who again, hasn’t really had to deal with much in her life. She’s had smooth sailing throughout her youth and is now experiencing the first emotional hurdle.

Dave (Jack Bannon) is a complicated soul. He’s gotten by so far in life by not letting anything deeper than banter in, but depth is starting to happen around and to him. He's finding it hard to navigate that with his old tricks.

Amanda (Charlotte Riley) has suffered great loss in her life. Her fiancé died a few years ago, and she's now with Dave. She's starting to step out into the world again, and she's trying to find a new future for herself.

How much research went into couples or individuals who've experienced this, and did you draw from that for the script?

I have extensive personal experience of the subject matter, but the show isn't autobiographical. In addition to that, we contacted several charities and we also had constant input on set, in prep and also in post, from midwives who were on set whenever we were shooting anything medical, so we could capture the specificity of, for example, sonography or the process of loss.

How important was it to you to showcase the lightness, humour and love within Stephen and Lisa's relationship, despite the challenges?

The show at its centre is a love story, and it's about a couple hitting their first problem, a problem that disrupts them from the people that they've found it easy to be. In that sense, it's also a bit of a coming of age for them, because they start to see the world for what it is, rather than with the kind of pink glow of life pre-tragedy. It was all about telling truthfully what it's like to be a couple that is in love: the way that they put their hands on each other, or how they make each other laugh.

How important was it to make sure it feels authentic and rooted in reality?

We were very careful at every stage to make sure that the show felt relatable. I think it's essential to connect with the audience and create a feeling. You also have a responsibility to speak to people if you're writing to them about something terrible that they've been through. You need to do it honestly and with authenticity. We were very careful throughout to protect the truth of what a lot of people watching the show would have experienced.

I'm only ever really trying to create a connection with the audience. I want to talk about feelings in the way that we all feel, rather than to have feelings as a kind of adjunct to a plot or another form of manipulation. In everything I do, the resonance and the connection with the audience is central.

Can you talk about how Stephen and Lisa’s relationship contrasts with Amanda and Dave’s?

With Stephen and Lisa, you have a couple who have a very strong bond, and they've been together a long time. They’re married and live together, and they clearly connect at quite a root level. We're watching a very anchored couple, having their boat tossed around on the waves, but it always stays at anchor. They do change, but they change together, and their relationship is strengthened as a result. By the end, they're able to talk openly to each other, they're much more emotionally capable than they were at the start.

With Dave and Amanda, you're seeing the first stages of a relationship which isn't really based on a root connection. It's based on Dave being quite pleased with himself that he's got himself a rich girlfriend he likes and thinks is impressive, and Amanda finding herself a handsome man with whom she has nothing in common, but with whom she can ease herself back into the real world after a long time lost to grief. There is a brief connection built between Dave and Amanda in their separate loneliness but it doesn't really last.

What draws you to exploring sitcoms and dramas in domestic settings?

I think the connection between all my previous shows is an interest in how humans interact with their spaces. It's something that I do constantly in writing. Having people constantly touching things, moving things, interacting with surfaces, drinking, eating, putting stuff in the dishwasher, to try and replicate the experience that we have, of being people in this era. It's what we largely do. We rarely go out and solve murders. We largely fill the dishwasher, watch TV, and that playing space is quite fascinating when you then drop bigger things into it.

What's the best piece of advice about writing that you've been given?

I was mentored by the poet John Kinsella at university and he gave me the best piece of advice I’ve had and which I follow still, which was to read books you’re not interested in. Find a topic in which you have zero interest, which you find utterly boring or pointless, and read a book about it. It’s the best way to keep your mind open and searching.

What do you want the audience to get from watching Babies?

It's always impossible to say what an audience will take from it, but what I hope that people get is warmth and a connection. I hope people feel like we're talking to them about what it's like to be them, about what it's like to wake up every morning and find that you do have to go through life and all its challenges and to try and create a connection.