Season two of anthology drama State of the Union begins on SundanceTV, Sundance Now and AMC Plus February 14. Brendan Gleeson, Patricia Clarkson and Esco Jouley are in the cast 

There are 10 episodes, each one 10 minutes long. The series airs over ten nights on SundanceTV, and all episodes are available on the streaming networks. 

Nick Hornby and Stephen Frears are behind the series, which looks into relationships. 

Clarkson’s Ellen and Gleeson’s Scott are a married couple spending ten minutes in a Connecticut coffee shop before their marriage counseling sessions. 

“Each week, between the bickering, they begin to piece together what has gone wrong between them. As the weeks go by, they start to deconstruct their 30-year marriage. Past betrayals are aired, their sex life is re-examined, and their vulnerabilities are finally shared. By the end of 10 weeks of marital counselling, they’re not the same couple they used to be, but is making a change enough to save their marriage, or should they walk away?” goes the SundanceTV description. 

Gleeson played President Trump in The Comey Rule and Alastor Moody in the Harry Potter films. 

Clarkson’s work includes Sharp Objects and House of Cards. 

Season one had Rosamund Pike and Chris O’Dowd as a bickering couple. 

See-Saw Films produces the show. Jamie Laurenson, Hakan Kousetta, Iain Canning, and Emile Sherman are executive producers along with Hornby and Frears, with Sophie Reynolds producing the series for See-Saw Films.

Hornby’s novels include High Fidelity and About a Boy and the memoir Fever Pitch. ■ 

SundanceTV debuts State of the Union, a series about a squabbling couple, on Monday (May 6). Nick Hornby, author of the novels High Fidelity, About a Boy and Juliet, Naked, created the show, which stars Chris O’Dowd and Rosamund Pike as a husband and wife working out issues in a pub moments before heading into marriage counseling.

The episodes run for just 10 minutes.

Hornby’s screenwriting projects include the films Brooklyn and An Education. He recently finished a novel called Just Like You, which he describes as a contemporary love story set amidst the Brexit referendum.

Hornby spoke with Multichannel News about the difference between authoring and screenwriting, how State of the Union was hatched and why what happens just before counseling is much more interesting than the counseling.

MCN: Ten-minute episodes — I assume that’s so viewers have more time to read your books?
Nick Hornby: [Laughs.] Yup.

I had a hole to fill when I was waiting for a bunch of people to get back on various projects, and I knew I couldn’t get on with anything for a month or so. I had this idea a while before and said, OK, I’m just gonna try it and see if it works.

MCN: Where did the idea come from?
NH: The idea for the couple was from a long time ago and I can’t really remember. I had been thinking about writing about counseling or therapy in some way and always ended up in the same place, that it doesn’t feel very dramatic to go into a therapist’s office because people say what they mean. The time before they go in is in some ways more dramatically interesting because it’s chaos. That seemed fun to write about.

MCN: How was the shift for you from writing novels to screenwriting?
NH: I love writing a screenplay, but it’s a very, very difficult profession in terms of all the problems, such as waiting three years for someone to read or invest or get a director. There’s a beautiful freedom with sitting down to start a novel and thinking, no one will ask me what the budget is, no one will ask me to cut a scene because it’s too expensive, I’m not going to lose any characters. That is quite refreshing when you’ve been doing screenplays for a while.

MCN: How has screenwriting affected the way you go about your novels?
NH: I think screenwriting affected my novels before I was a screenwriter in that I’d watched a lot of movies. I’d always liked writing dialogue. Some of my inspirations to write in the first place were screenwriters. As well as loving Anne Tyler and other contemporary novelists, I also loved Barry Levinson and what he wrote with Diner. There are a pair of English radio comedy writers, Galton and Simpson, who were big inspirations for me before I started as well.

I think screenwriting has always been in [me]. Recently I gave it more weight because things were taking off and projects were coming in that were quite interesting. It became a bit more than 50-50 of my working time.

MCN: Do Rosamund Pike and Chris O’Dowd weigh in much on your scripts?
NH: They had a rather nice routine, which was, after they finish filming, they get a bottle of wine and read the next day’s script to each other. They’ve very bright and they’re very good about telling me what’s sayable and what’s not sayable or what’s funny and what’s not funny.

MCN: Are you involved with the High Fidelity series for Hulu?
NH: A little bit. I’ve been in quite a bit of touch with [star] Zoe [Kravitz]. Jesse Peretz, who directed the Juliet, Naked movie, is directing the first episode. He’s become a friend over the last year or two. I’ve been helping out where I can.

MCN: Chris O’Dowd’s character has a pint of beer in each episode of State of the Union. Ten minutes isn’t a lot of time to consume an English imperial pint.
NH: The old days, when the licensing hours were different, we were all used to drinking pints in 10 minutes because you only had about two hours [to drink before closing]. Chris is probably just about old enough to remember that time.