Best Interests episode 2 review: Michael Sheen is excellent as a husband swept along in his wife’s wake

Eight weeks have elapsed since the end of the first episode and Marnie (Niamh Moriarty) is still in hospital, still unconscious. She has brain damage from her cardiac arrest. Now she’s having a seizure.

The doctors say that she will never leave hospital again.

There is a meeting of the hospital ethics committee — staged admirably by the programme’s producers as a low-key affair — which decides to support the decision to withdraw interventionist treatment from Marnie. Her mother Nicci (Sharon Horgan) is still implacably opposed to letting her child die. Her father Andrew (Michael Sheen) appears to be swept along in Nicci’s wake; you get the feeling that this has been Andrew’s mode of transport for all the years of their marriage.

Andrew is grieving the impending loss of Marnie, but he’s trying to accommodate other aspects of life. He’s still visiting his relative Tom, who has mental health issues and says he would have killed himself if it hadn’t been for Andrew.

Nicci is laser-focused on Marnie, and is greedy for time alone with her. At the door of the hospital, when Nicci and Andrew are just about to go in to visit Marnie, Nicci sends him away to go to work. Andrew seems relieved to go.

“My child,” Nicci calls Marnie to the nice lady from arbitration who calls to their house.

“Our child,” corrects Andrew as he is making the coffee.

The arbitration lady gets short shrift.

And through it all are the memories of Marnie when she was lively and laughing. At Marnie’s bedside, Andrew remembers how he had made a playlist for her birth. Andrew is a bit of a hippy, with his music and his marijuana. He tells the unconscious Marnie that she was delivered to the Stone Roses’ song Your Star Will Shine. Now he recites it and starts to weep. This is a wonderful performance from Michael Sheen. Andrew is what is patronisingly called a beta male. Andrew’s never going to be the star of any situation.

He goes home to find that Nicci is entertaining a representative of a pro-life group, who offers to pay the legal bills if Nicci and Andrew decide to take the case for keeping Marnie alive to court. This results in the biggest row Nicci and Andrew have had so far. Nicci doesn’t understand why Andrew won’t take this help for their daughter. “She’s in pain!” cries Andrew. Then he packs his bag and moves out.

Their older daughter, Katie, played by the Irish actress Alison Oliver, has a lot to put up with. There is no part of her life that isn’t affected by Marnie and her illness. Her parents had to leave Katie’s school concert when they got a call from the hospital about Marnie’s seizure. Katie is buying the love of her girlfriend by giving the unscrupulous girl some of Marnie’s tranquillisers.

All of this is happening to an ordinary suburban family. We’re halfway through now and Best Interests is still terrific.