I’ve been at more than one party where a stranger has told me they are still living with their ex, even sharing a bed. I don’t judge. I’ve experienced this myself. I remember a sad, uncanny time at the end of a relationship. Untangling our lives but not our bodies, supporting the other through their worst pain while trying to ignore the fact that the worst pain is you. But sometimes these strangers tell me they have been living this way for months, perhaps years, and my empathy flips to horror. “What the hell is going on in your house?” I think.

I found answers in Break Clause (Thursday, 10pm), a new Channel 4 dramedy. It’s the story of sweethearts Ben (Samuel Bottomley) and Lil (Lara Ricote), Leeds University graduates who decide to transplant their lives to London. On the eve of moving, there’s an incident that leads to a terrible confession in the hallway of their new flat. Ben and Lil break up – in the presence of their estate agent, who tells them the paperwork is irrevocable. They will have to live together for six months until the contract break clause. That’s awkward! But can tenancy rights correct a relationship wrong?

Break Clause mines territory other shows ignore: the biting economic pressure of being young in a housing crisis. There’s no suspension of disbelief here, no twentysomethings living in loft apartments the size of a Virgin Atlantic business lounge. The couple live in south London, in an ex-council flat with grotty underpasses. Ben has a meet-cringe with a neighbour who spots him bin-diving for food. He’s copying videos posted by foraging influencers. “I think they mean the bins outside M&S, not the big ones under flats,” she replies.

Lil is an architect, Ben is a writer. It’s hard for any household to survive income inequality, by which I mean only one of them has one. Lil gets a job, at a firm, on a promotion track, while Ben volunteers to be injected with viruses for £800. Honestly, I’m not sure he is a good writer. Partly because he thought that a medical trial was a job interview, partly because he attempts to steal a YA novel idea from a teenager he tutors. Also, he’s too nice.

Then there’s dating, which takes place under each other’s noses. Ben and Lil are trying to be friends. What choice do they have, forced cheek by jowl? They could illegally sublet, I suppose, but it probably wouldn’t give them both the means to live elsewhere. Perhaps their relationship isn’t over, the series teases. But should it be?

If a 22-year-old were to confess to me they weren’t sure their current partner was “the one”, I would tell them baldly that obviously they weren’t, and that their relationship with relationships had barely begun. There’ll be more of this pain, I’d say, harder lessons, plus a healthy whack of bad timing and cosmic injustice. It’s probably a good thing I don’t have young people who look up to me.

Break Clause’s will-they-won’t-they can feel thin, and John Thomson is underused as Ben’s father. But it’s funny, there’s verve to the dialogue and direction, plus a winning performance from Mexican-American comedian Ricote, an effervescent mix of Megan Stalter and Jenny Slate. She lands the best gags – such as when Lil, seized by the romance of a moment, will jump into a game of double dutch with teenagers, or lean her head on a stranger’s shoulder as they sit on a bench by the Thames. Repulsed and confused, they all give her a dirty look. “Bad call on my part,” Lil acknowledges.

Mostly, it’s refreshing to watch a show that isn’t wholly convinced love conquers all. In this economy? I’m convinced that twentysomething couples who live together now do so primarily to split rent. Certainly, no one in London is in love. They can’t access the upper tiers of the self-actualisation pyramid required, because they’re too stressed about not having a pension. Most comedies exist in a fantasy realm, where all housing is affordable. But escapism isn’t everything. Maybe rental regulation is the romance this generation needs.