HBO's new series 'Divorce' shows the end isn't always the end

Sometimes it's obvious when a marriage has run its course.

For Frances and Robert, the characters played by Sarah Jessica Parker and Thomas Haden Church in HBO's “Divorce,” it's her reaction when she comes home expecting nobody to be there and instead sees his car in the driveway: “My heart sunk.”

Yeah, that might be a sign.

Premiering Sunday, Oct. 9, with the first of 10 episodes, the half-hour dark comedy stars Parker and Church as long-married suburban New Yorkers with children whose marriage has been failing for quite some time. Frances, in particular, was aware of it but kept stuffing those thoughts down in the hopes things would get better. But the wake-up call came when she saw her friend Diane (Molly Shannon) shoot her husband Nick (Tracy Letts) during a bitter fight at a party.

“I think for her seeing that level of violence, that level of anger and despair and resentment,” Parker says, “it allows her to say, 'I don't want to feel that way because you are someone that I loved. And the only reason this is devastating for me right now to say this to you is because I loved you. If I didn't care and I married too young and I made a poor decision and we spent a life together and it feels wasted, I would simply walk away. But the fact that we loved and we created children and we have attempted at righting this ship more than once, over and over, this allows me to see that I don't want to live like this anymore.'”

Robert is devastated but not completely surprised. For years, he had existed in what Church describes as this “comfortable but lazy, desensitized reality” of “unacknowledged indiscretions” and now he is forced to face the cold, hard truth: She wants out.

“He still very much loves her and she questions whether or not she still loves him,” the actor says. “You know, you're together for over 20 years and then one day somebody just plants a flag, 'It's over.' And then it's like, 'Oh ..., is it really over?' “

Perhaps — but not right away. Living separately, both struggle with the breakup, he — with his underwear strewn about his messy apartment — more so than she. But just like quitting smoking, they find that quitting a marriage isn't always successful on the first attempt.

“There's a one-step-forward, one-step-back kind of maneuvering with both of them. I just think they're trying to get through every day with some degree of dignity,” Church says.

Some scenes are painful to watch and others might make some viewers squirm. Though this series may be listed as a comedy, the yuks don't exactly come by the truckload. It's not that kind of show.

“We did not set out to make a light comedy,” Church says. “We set out to make ... a dark comedy. But look, sometimes it's just dark and there's nothing comedic about it.”