You're listening to Love Stories with me, Dolly Alderton, a series in which I talked

to guests about their most defining relationships, the passion, heartbreak, longing, familiarity

and fondness that has formed who they are.

My guest this week is the writer, actor and director Sharon Hawken.

Like many people, I first fell in love with Sharon's ruthlessly honest, occasionally

caustic comic voice in her 2006 TV series Pulling, which she co-wrote and starred in as

Donna, a directionless but lovable woman who finds herself at the beginning of her 30s

wanting to start a new.

Sharon has written prolifically, widely and to great critical acclaim about all different

stories from prison in dead boss to divorce in HBO's divorce to catastrophe, a phenomenally

funny, at times heartbreaking and characteristically truthful comedy drama about marriage.

Sharon co-wrote and co-starred in the series with comedian Rob Delaney and their on-screen

relationship and all its complications, contradictions, cruelty and unique connection have left audiences

both here and in America utterly hooked.

I guess I don't know, it's a bit of a tricky one because really it wasn't the idea that

came about, it was just me and him that came about.

Like that's all it was really because it is about an Irish woman meeting in America,

man and all of that.

We knew that we both wanted to write about like a real version of a real marriage and then

there was kind of a guest little obstacles that become creative positive things, which

is he's American and I'm Irish, why are we together?

We initially thought we were going to throw ourselves right in the middle of it all, but

...