Your middle-aged friend starts dating your daughter - drama explores what happens next

For years, Nicola Walker has played detectives, lawyers and women holding complicated lives together. But her latest role in comedy-drama Alice and Steve may be the closest she's come to playing herself.

The six-part series, written by Sophie Goodhart and co-starring Jemaine Clement, begins with a friendship-shattering premise. Alice (Walker) discovers her best friend Steve (Clement) is dating her 26-year-old daughter, Izzy. What follows is part comedy and part emotional warfare as two middle-aged friends spiral into a battle of resentment, jealousy and revenge.

The show's central dilemma may be extreme, but when asked how she would react in Alice's shoes, Walker says the parenting emotions at its heart feel very familiar.

"My son is older and has had a few relationships and, as a mother, every one is unexpected," she tells BBC News.

"It's really hard going from having complete control of them as this small entity who believes everything you say and, in their eyes, you're great at everything.

"Then they become teenagers, they start bringing people home they desire and it's a massive parenting shift."

"You have to just keep your mouth shut, which is the opposite of what Alice does.

"You have to become bovine, my friend told me. You have to just go 'mm-hmm, mm-hmm' and behave like a large cow around them, just pretending to agree," she laughs.

It's perhaps no surprise then that Walker feels a close connection to Alice.

Despite playing everything from detective Cassie Stuart in Unforgotten to divorce lawyer Hannah Stern in The Split, she says this is the character who feels most like her.

"I'm always playing Alice in every job I've ever done," she says. "I think Alice is nearer to me than anyone else I've ever played."

She explains that it's because she has the same "rage" as her and "being a parent drives you completely loopy - but you would do anything for your children, so I understand the basics of her personality".

That relatability is part of what makes Alice more than just an overbearing parent as, behind the chaos and comedy, she's a woman struggling to accept that her daughter is making choices she can no longer control.

Steve, too, is more complicated than the show's premise initially suggests.

While audiences may assume he's simply a middle-aged man dating a much younger woman, Clement says he was drawn to the character because of the conflict at the heart of him.

"What makes Steve human is conflict within yourself - he has something he really wants, which is something he shouldn't do, and that's a great conflict when you're acting