Cheaters stars break down the BBC's hidden gem and what to expect in season 2

But when we meet them this time around, Fola and Josh are edging towards a relationship while a reluctant Zack is being pushed to sign divorce papers.

Esther, who flounced off to do an 'Eat, Pray, Love' in Thailand after dumping Josh, has since arrived back in London with her "hot" new Swedish/Norwegian boyfriend. She's not quite sure where he's from.

If season 1 was about two people in long-term relationships realising that they have a stronger connection with each other, season 2, which picks up a few months after, is about "exploring trying to start a relationship when the beginning of it was infidelity", explained Wokoma.

"I was just hoping that it wasn't going to be twee because what I loved about season 1 is that it really took you to unexpected places," she added. "I was just hoping that we were able to explore that while it also be surprising. And Ollie has managed to do that."

Wokoma also pitched "a big old foursome".

"I was hoping that we all just... get it out of our systems, and then just go our separate ways," she added. "I'm still gunning for that.

"I think it should be a series that's set in a bedroom, all the episodes, and it all just kicks off. There's fights, and then they all die. That's what I was hoping for."

Lyttelton didn't go for that – not this time, anyway.

"It would be really easy to make the series kind of a reset," said Maguire of the direction the writing does travel in.

"But the fact that Josh has made his bed, so he's got to lie in it, narratively, and tackle it head on, I was really looking forward to seeing how that panned out, knowing what Fola is like, knowing what Josh is like, knowing that I don't think Cheaters gives easy answers or doesn't necessarily like to tie things in a bow because that's not what life's like.

"I was really intrigued to see how he did that. And I think he managed to have his cake and eat it in that sense."

Zack still gets off on watching other people having sex, which created an emotional gulf between himself and Fola, and ultimately contributed to the breakdown of their marriage.

"Ollie has this great way of writing where he'll juxtapose very serious emotions with very lustful feelings," said Fox. "So often there will be an intimate moment and then that will, in some sense, open the door to how a character actually feels about something."

It's a challenging role, but one Fox enjoyed.

"The fact that it's not orthodox is more interesting," he said. "Most people will have an experimental phase in their life and then they will move on from it, so his desire to watch other people have sex with his wife isn't particularly conservative.

"I think everyone's got their weird stuff, and it's fun to explore that."

When Fox first read the scripts, that strand of his character was kept off the page.

"I didn't know until the night before the readthrough that I would be cracking one out while listening to Josh smash Fola," he said.

"I remember him [Ollie] saying, 'You're going to come in; you're going to see wine glasses and then you're going to go upstairs; you're going to hear her having sex; you're going to do all this in one take."

In season 2, Zack is telling people that he's living in a penthouse while his divorce is finalised, when really, he's holed up in the box room of a couple he met online who enjoy other people watching them get down and dirty – they even have their own web channel.

Sometimes he'll join them for some home-cooked kedgeree too.

But that unconventional arrangement results in a chance encounter with a woman called Claire, who also has the same hobby as him. But for Zack, it's less about sexual gratification, although that can't be discounted, and far more about feeling at home in one's skin so that you can establish deep, sustained connections, says Fox.

"I think repression is sad," he said. "You want to know what makes someone tick, just so you can work out what you have in common, not what separates you. And it's exciting that he manages to experience acceptance on that front. These interactions that he has, these sexual moments, they open the door to him working out who he is.

"And I guess that begins with finding people who are like-minded, people who don't judge you. It allows him to find peace, I guess, and then when he manages to form a relationship, there's a tremendous relief in him and a normalcy in it."

Zack's dynamic with Claire also inspires the best scene in the show - and one of the best scenes of telly I've watched this year.

After initially bumping into her at the house he's living in and going on a more traditional date, that then opens the door to a less traditional second date: watching Zack's landlords having sex together.

It's a brilliant moment and, despite how it sounds, actually quite sweet.

"I just remember Ollie saying, 'We want to shoot you both holding hands and masturbating like it's a really romantic scene, and I remember thinking, good. How?'

"And then, sure enough, he manages to do that. It was turning up to set thinking – I mean, I'm a super repressed person. Like, honestly, it would fill me with f**king dread – and so I would turn up to set and I'd be like, 'OK, I'm probably going to have to do the masturbating seven, eight times. The first two will be hell, and then the last two will be the last two, so I've probably got four where I have to really think about this.'

"And then you would turn up and there'd be a dolly and a crane and you'd be thinking, 'OK, this is going to be 25 times.' And now I'm holding hands with someone that I barely know, just both simultaneously having to climax on screen.

"I guess I'm simultaneously pleased that my mother isn't alive and that my dad doesn't know how to use apps because there's... just no. I think it could kill him. And in some sense I'm relieved that she [my mother] is no longer here because there's just no way that I could look them in the eyes after this.

"But, you know, that's part of the journey with this."

Esther also goes on quite the journey in season 2, but prior to getting her hands on the scripts, Cooke was "slightly nervous" about what Lyttelton had planned for her.

"Season 1 ended and it was so final, breaking up with Josh, that I was like, I don't know where that leaves Esther," she explained.

"I was a bit like, oh, will her whole arc just be this heartbroken, lonely girl? But really, Ollie's managed to navigate that in such an interesting way. She comes back with her new boyfriend, who is a symbol for something else, and she goes on this whole chaotic journey to find herself.

"And I'm not sure if she actually does, but I think it's just an interesting route to go down because we could have met her with a whole different attitude, but really, she's still just pure Esther and pure chaos, but in a really entertaining and fun way."

Following the collapse of her relationship, Esther has also come to the worrying realisation that outside of her former life with Josh, she hasn't built anything that solely belongs to her, which will be an uncomfortably familiar feeling for many people watching.

"She's come home and she's reminded that she's 29, she's broke, she doesn't really know what she's doing with her life, she doesn't have a career, she's now single and she's realised she doesn't know how to date, she doesn't really have any friends," said Cooke.

"It's classic. It's so many of us. So many people turn 30 and have this ultimate crisis about their life. She's very relatable."

That "milennial angst", as Cooke puts it, shoots out of her in the finale. Esther and Josh are covered in foam courtesy of Fola's sister spraying them with a fire extinguisher after the former lovers start drunkenly snogging. Dragged back to reality, Esther then starts pelting Josh with eggs while confessing how she's really been feeling: utterly lost.

"It's really fun to play someone who's so relentlessly happy, but on the inside, if you cracked her open, she's probably quite empty," said Cooke, who "really, really wanted to get that scene right".

"Everyone kept saying that, 'Oh, it's a good performance piece, it's a good performance piece.' And just the pressure to get it right, I felt the weight of Esther on my shoulders.

"But I think we did, and I think it's left really nicely because she turns up the next day and she's like, 'Feel alright now.' And it's like, sure she does. So we'll see, if we get a third season. Who knows where she'll go. But I think she's still got a long way to go."

Like Esther and Zack, Fola reluctantly confronts some painful truths of her own in season 2.

Initially, you might think that meeting Josh was simply a case of right person, wrong time. But during an emotional conversation between the pair in the season's final moments, you realise that her resistance to fully committing to a new relationship isn't really about her impending divorce, but is actually rooted in something much deeper and more emotional.

"I think with someone like Fola, it's quite easy to make it like, oh, she's tough on the outside, but she's soft on the inside," said Wokoma. "I feel like that’s quite simple, and what Ollie does is not simple.

"The last episode took me and Josh a few rounds to get our heads around what we were actually saying, and what were the things that we were still not saying, because it isn't this big Four-Weddings-and-a-Funeral-I-love-you-in-the-rain, it's a lot more complex. And so as an actor, that was tough, but also it would make me feel a bit cringe if it was too simplistic.

"I think, ultimately, being wanted by somebody is something she really struggles with, and being seen by somebody is something that she really struggles with, and that's different from being hard on the outside, soft on the inside. She's so led by fear; she spends a lot of this series really trying to hide that fear, and that can be quite grating.

"But I'm all up for playing grating women. I'm so beyond being liked. I don't care anymore [laughs] – in terms of female characters, obviously. Please like me. But no pressure."

Has existing in a world in which misogynoir is still all too widely perpetuated contributed to that?

"Yeah, it has, which is kind of inevitable," said Wokoma. "Me, Ollie and Petra [Fried], our exec, we had a big chat about that. And especially introducing her sister, because I think having a family member really reveals a lot because that's another Black woman. They're not necessarily discussing their Blackness, but I think it gives you an insight into how Fola thinks that she should turn up in the world.

"And I think that when it comes to interracial relationships, there are things that the other person is going to understand about you, and I think that there is a toughness that is expected of you sometimes – not all the time, it depends who you're with.

"But ultimately, it's about Fola deciding that she wants to be seen by somebody. I don't think that's necessarily universal to all Black women, but for her, I think for whatever reason, she's grown up thinking that somebody seeing her absolute core is not a safe thing.

"And by the end of the series, she's realising that she can't have bonds with anybody, including her sister, including Josh."

There's currently no word on season 3, but regardless of what happens next, Wokoma is hoping for a swift answer either way.

"Let's not wait four years for the next one [season 1 went into production in 2020] because I don't know whether I'll still have any collagen in my body by then," she said.

Do the cast think Cheaters could do a Fleabag and bow out after two seasons?

"I think that we could absolutely leave it," said Wokoma. "I think that's also a very actor way of thinking, that whenever you do something a little bit of you [thinks you] should probably say goodbye at the end, just so that you're not waiting around for four years like I have been doing for this.

"But Ollie's really, really clever. I think that if I was to step into his brain, I think that we've had six months in between seasons 1 and 2. I think that if we were to do a third season, it would be quite a leap, and that would be really interesting, seeing where they are.

"But I also think it's a very smart thing to leave it to have an ending to a series like we've ended season 2 as well."

"Even that shot at the end, where it just pans up to the sky, it does, in a way, feel quite final," added Maguire. "I think either feels possible."

But Wokoma is still "pushing the foursome".

"Maybe that's a Christmas special," she added.

Cheaters seasons 1-2 are available to stream now on BBC iPlayer.

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