Freezing comes to BBC Two this Wednesday night for three consecutive nights after the comedy’s first episode piloted to critical acclaim in BBC Four’s Tight Spot season. The urban comedy, starring Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern and Tom Hollander, follows the lives of a couple whose careers in the cut-throat, celebrity-driven world are sadly not as hot as they’d like to be.

Forty-somethings Elizabeth and Matt are a glamorous and successful couple – or at least they would be if either of them could actually get a job. Matt has been replaced by his assistant in the publishing house where he worked for 15 years. Meanwhile, Hollywood actress Elizabeth seems to be paying the price for choosing an English husband and swapping sunny LA for suburban London. Despite being Oscar-nominated in her youth, Elizabeth is finding it hard to get an audition. Matt, in the meantime, is thrown the occasional scrap of editing by his former assistant.

In this first episode, things look as if they might improve when Elizabeth is offered an exciting new art-house movie, and Matt discovers an “astro-cool” new sci-fi writer. Okay, so Elizabeth might have to perform one or two sexually explicit scenes in her movie, and Matt might not totally understand what his writer’s novel is actually about, but they just need to keep their cool and stick together.

Luckily, Elizabeth’s agent, Leon Blakely, is one of the most powerful men in the business and capable of bullying anyone into anything. Perhaps unluckily, Elizabeth and Matt are also Leon’s best friends, a situation that should help Elizabeth’s cause though frequently doesn’t.

All three are desperate to cling on to their credibility – as well as each other – while discovering the hard way how cold life can be when you’re no longer considered “hot”.

Wednesday 20 February
10.00-10.30pm BBC TWO