If you like your TV dramas to be about the big, headline-grabbing stuff of life — serial killers, corrupt politicians, drug gangs, sex, murder, war, violence, billionaires — then Leonard & Hungry Paul (BBC1/iPlayer) is not for you.

Leonard & Hungry Paul is about none of these. Instead, it is about, well, nothing much. Based on Rónán Hession’s novel, it is a quiet study of the small, uncelebrated life. Or as Leonard (Alex Lawther) put it, a “minor, harmless existence”, which is most people’s existence if you think about it.

There are no raucous belly laughs in this mildest of comedies, which, like the introverts it champions, is slight and undemanding. But it is strangely calming and immersive, offering little moments of profundity.

Oh, except that, despite its understatedness, it has Julia Roberts narrating it. Yes, Julia Roberts, the Hollywood megastar, which gives it huge bragging rights, although bragging is something that Leonard would never do. Her American accent does stand out oddly in this Irish drama, but she apparently loved the novel and immediately said yes to narrating it.

Leonard and Hungry Paul (Laurie Kynaston) are shy men who still live with their parents, wear sensible clothing and enjoy playing board games. Leonard realises that when he gets a plus-one invitation to Hungry Paul’s sister’s wedding, he will have no one to take but his beloved mother.

But then she dies (his father died when he was a baby) and he is alone, with no one to talk to in his empty house, waking up to the same bellowing local radio station every morning and getting the same bus to work.

The moustached Leonard is not the kind of man who would go to the pub, where he might play “darts or dominoes or some other prison games”, so he goes to Hungry Paul’s house to have quiet chats about outer space. It’s unclear why he is called “hungry”.

It is hard to translate a book that is about innerness and reflection to the screen and, though I haven’t read it, I imagine some of the tiny nuances may be lost. But this is written with great charm, a warming, relatable watch and a paean to the non-sharp-elbowed.

Hession has previously said that while working in the civil service he began to notice the “quiet people”. We know what confident folk think because they never stop telling us, he said. He wanted to celebrate those who stand back and reflect.

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Leonard talks to his mother’s ashes (one slightly jarring note was when he collected the ashes from a surly, unsympathetic man who put them in a “bag for life’’ — bit of an obvious gag) and wants to “open the doors and windows of my life a little”; to step beyond his bubble of the safe and the familiar.

While sketching Boudica at home, her arrow comes off the page and through his grey shirt into his heart and he realises he is in love with Shelley, the admin assistant and fire warden at work (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell)

It is reassuring that there is still a place for gentle, unshouty TV, the type that doesn’t serve up exhausting cliffhangers or huge plot twists (Detectorists got gentleness off to a fine art). This one is like a reassuring ticking clock.

In an ever more globalised, polarised, yelling world, maybe some of us seek the small canvas. It is a soothing antidote and a reminder that there’s nothing wrong with the life that’s ordinary.
★★★★☆
All episodes of Leonard & Hungry Paul are available on iPlayer

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