Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic What could have appealed to Abi Morgan about returning to the glossy world of The Split, for a two-part special set in a sprawling villa in the countryside around Barcelona, at the height of summer? “Well, it’s tricky, isn’t it?” says Morgan, who created the drama in 2018 and officially put it to bed after three series in 2022. “What would make me want to go back with some of my favourite actors, to a very nice, hot country that does amazing food and amazing wine, and film the kind of joyous make-ups and break-ups of a chaotic destination wedding?”The Split, a moreish tale of high-end divorce lawyers with tangled personal lives, was a big hit for the BBC. With a starry ensemble cast led by Nicola Walker, it put stressful but ultimately loving family life under a microscope, against a backdrop of demanding careers, big money divorces and aspirational kitchens. “I’ve always said it is a Trojan horse for so much more. It looks like a family legal drama, and it’s a nine o’clock [primetime] show, but television has always, for me, been quietly political,” says Morgan. “I’m always trying to make people feel less alone, by showing understanding of people.” She tries to do this across all of her work, she explains, whether that’s writing about sex addiction in Shame or Margaret Thatcher’s weaknesses in The Iron Lady, or what it’s like to grow up in a creative family in the Netflix series Eric. She is drawn to what she calls “the messy stuff”.There are few life events messier than divorce, and in The Split Morgan wanted to challenge the notion that divorce should be seen as a failure. “I just see some marriages as finite. We live in this new age where marriage isn’t meant to go on forever, necessarily, and yet we still buy into the trope that it can and it will.” In the special, Hannah (Walker) and Nathan (Stephen Mangan) are divorced and navigating a new kind of friendship. “I’m really admiring of people who are brave with divorce,” Morgan says. “I think it’s interesting that myself and my two siblings have all been in relationships for over 20 years. It’s been really important to all of us to try and find a way to make something work.” She was 13 when her parents, actor Pat England and theatre director Gareth Morgan, got divorced. “I’m now 56, and I still talk to my siblings about it.”The world of marriage and divorce has changed, even in the six years since the series started. No-fault divorce, meaning that couples no longer have to assign blame for the end of a marriage, came into effect in UK law in the same week that the third series aired. “And one of the big progressions is the notion of mediation, and divorce surgeries. Pre-nups have become much more important. They are much more de rigueur now. Even if they don’t always legally stand, they are a kind of template and a blueprint to have those difficult conversations.”Has her work on The Split made Morgan something of an expert in divorce law? “The first thing I ever wrote on was a medical drama, and you do think, for the first two weeks, that you can do open heart surgery,” she says. “There are moments that I will launch into some boring diatribe on divorce law, and then I realise that I only know the surface of it. I think I’m an expert for the period that I’m writing it, and then it drains away, in my goldfish brain.”But do her friends ever come to her for relationship advice? “I don’t think they dare, actually. But I have been able to put friends in touch with some good divorce lawyers.”Morgan has always said that the BBC would have liked The Split to continue, but she called time on it after three series (though a Manchester-set spin-off, The Split Up, written by Ursula Rani Sarma, is due to go into production next year). Three series felt like the right “shape” for the original, she says. The first series was about Hannah and Nathan’s marriage, the second about Hannah’s affair, and the third about the couple’s divorce. It was also designed to explore women at different stages of their lives, with the three Defoe sisters representing women in their twenties, thirties and forties. Now that Hannah is in her fifties, Morgan couldn’t resist another peek at her life. “What does it mean when your body and your whole ecosystem changes in your fifties? What does it mean to be something else?”In 2018, Morgan’s own ecosystem underwent a dramatic change. She wrote about what she calls “the grenade that went off in my life” in This Is Not A Pity Memoir, which was published in 2022 and became a bestseller. Her husband, the actor Jacob Krichefski — they married in 2021 after living together for 22 years — suffered seizures and an inflammation of the brain, and was put into an induced coma for seven months.When he awoke, he thought Morgan was an imposter. “I was at a point where my husband didn’t recognise me any more. I was really questioning my actual existence,” she says. “And then I got a stage three, grade three cancer diagnosis. So then it was like, my god, my existence is really in question.”She wrote the memoir at her kitchen table, at night, over the course of three weeks. “I was so obliterated. I was so devastated. The words and the process of making chapters out of that chaos, it really helped rebuild me. And I also had to make money, really simply. So writing my own story was another part of that process.”The return of The Split stands out in the Christmas TV schedules. It has none of the tinsel and trimmings that you might expect at this time of year. But the way that Morgan describes it makes it seem perfectly festive after all. “Christmas is the best and the worst of times, don’t you think? It exposes all the fractures and weaknesses and splits and strengths in a family, and that’s always been at the heart of The Split.”At least the Defoe women will get to work out their romantic issues in style, as they always do. “If we’re going to burst the bubble of family,” says Morgan, “then hopefully we’re going to give people the relief of a gorgeous location and sunshine, in the middle of the cold.”On BBC1 and iPlayer on December 29 and 30 at 9pm; series 1-3 are on iPlayer nowFind out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen
