Around the mid-1980s to the early noughties the middle-class, midlife-crisis relationship comedy was a solid staple of the art house circuit. The template for these films was laid out by directors such as Woody Allen and Nora Ephron. They featured intellectual, middle-class Manhattanites whose seemingly perfect lives, working enviably comfortable jobs as writers, publishers or East Coast theatre and film directors, were given uncomfortable, though funny jolts by midlife neurosis and anxieties that necessitated angsty conversations in Central Park, the Met or the booths of reliable New York cafes, delis and restaurants...