For a moment, it resembles Alan and Lynn's fictional relationship.
This theme of struggle is expanded through the footballer's (fictional) relationship with a militant suffragette.
But while I'd agree with their summation of that (admittedly fictional) relationship, it's as different to my relationship with my partner as night is to day.
Their fictional relationship developed from a tense partnership to a tortured romance, which in the new six-episode series has soured into a breakup.
It explores the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich's sexual theories by simultaneously showing a fictional relationship that ends with a murder and images of the actual New York youth counterculture.
Even so, there is a frisson whenever a fictional relationship spills off the edges of the screen like ale into an overfilled tankard.
The audience's perception of the relationship between the actors also has the potential to affect how they see the fictional relationship, distracting from the careful work of the playwright and director.
Then there is the uncertainty as to whether the dialogue belongs to the play or to Maria and Valentine themselves; often, we cannot tell where their fictional relationship ends and their real one begins.
Dunn's own mother had become ill just before she wrote this book, and there is a real tenderness to the fictional relationship as well as an unflinching look at the sacrifices that caring demands.
