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In a peaceful neighborhood of the city, a person is standing in his driveway, wearing a vest and expressing his feelings. “I feel myself getting quieter. More invisible,” remarks the main character, gazing up at the night sky. “One thing’s led to another and at this point I feel like if I don’t do something, I’ll just carry on in this simple, peaceful routine.” His friend Paul, his closest and only friend, reflects on this statement. “Nothing wrong with that,” he responds, his bathrobe flapping gently. “Preferable to attempting to leave an impact only to wind up defacing it.”

For those exhausted by the bluster and fast pace of modern television offerings, the show arrives similar to a warm cover with a hot drink of blackcurrant juice.

In line with its harmless protagonists, the series – a six-episode program created by its authors, inspired by Rónán Hession’s understated book – looks disapprovingly toward today's world; gazing skeptically through its spectacles on everything related to unnecessary noise, sudden movements or – perish the thought – excessive aspiration. The series rather, an ode to introversion; a gentle tribute for those happy to amble along below the parapet. However. Leonard (one more sublimely idiosyncratic turn by the actor) feels restless. He senses a growing “desire to unlock the doors and windows of my life … just a bit.” The recent death of his mother has yanked the floor from under his slippers and this young man, a ghost writer, now finds himself questioning the paths that have brought him to his current situation (single; defensively moustached; writing a range of educational volumes for a man who signs off correspondence using the words “ciao for now”).

And so Leonard starts an exploration for personal satisfaction, accompanied by the somewhat braver Paul (Laurie Kynaston) serving as his trusted friend, guide and ally in a weekly board games evening functioning as both symposium (“Is the water heated from kids relieving themselves, or do children urinate because it’s warm?”) and safe space.

(What's the origin of "Hungry" Paul? The reason is unknown. The beginning of this name is shrouded in mystery. Maybe he once ate a snack in record time, or answered to a socially fraught incident by panic-peeling some food items using his teeth).

Into Leonard’s gentle world cartwheels Shelley (the actress), a fresh spring-loaded associate who cheerily offers to get rid of his terrible supervisor (the actor) at a fire practice. That whooshing sound you can hear represents Leonard's calm life experiencing a revolution.

In other scenes during the opening installment of this program not heavily plotted and centered around what younger viewers might call “vibes”, viewers encounter Hungry Paul’s dad (the ever-wonderful the actor), a battered sofa of a man who covertly observes, tapes and rewatches television game programs to amaze his loving spouse using his trivia skills.

Shepherding us through all this minor-key niceness we hear a narrator that sounds very much like – and, indeed, very much is – the Hollywood icon. Indeed, the star. Should you wonder, “certainly the presence of a big-name celebrity clashes with the program's low-key style and initially serves only as an interruption?” that's accurate. However, Roberts acquits herself well, and dialogue for example “Leonard's challenge is his absence of an expression of discovery” assist in making sure that initial doubts fade if not quite to appreciation, then certainly understanding.

Enough complaining for now. The show's core has good intentions: the right place being “sitting on a park bench next to the Detectorists, showing the duck it loves.” This is a show that ambles along in its sleeveless jumper, at times staring into space, at other times looking toward the ground, calmly assured that nothing is on Earth as uplifting as being with good friends.

Open the doors and windows of your life, a little, and let it in.