As hit Amazon Prime series Modern Love returns to our screens for a second series, Danielle de Wolfe discovers more from actress Minnie Driver.

It's often said that love knows no bounds. Defying all creeds, cultures and emphasising that age is but a number, the idea of human beings finding their one true counterpoint in another is the basis upon which fairy tales are built.

But just as the concept of love defies all convention, so do the unexpected tales that arise from those who intrepidly set out to find it. For years, these stories have been printed in ink as part of The New York Times' acclaimed column Modern Love - material that was transformed into an acclaimed anthology series of the same name by Amazon in 2019.

Set to return for a second series following much viewer adulation, the list of instantly recognisable names - including Good Will Hunting's Minnie Driver, Game Of Thrones star Kit Harington and Ratched's Sophie Okonedo - stands as testament to the material the show is built upon.

"I've been part of the podcast of Modern Love, I'd always read the column and then I recorded one of the stories, so I already loved it," declares series two star Driver, 51.

"I think it's a really interesting format - I just wish they were longer. I mean, there were some I didn't mind were a half hour, but there were [episodes] that I really wished were an hour."

Written and directed by Once and Begin Again's John Carney, series one starred a host of Hollywood names, including One Day and Les Miserables' Anne Hathaway, Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel and Fleabag's Hot Priest, Andrew Scott, and series two is shaping up to be just as impressive as its predecessor.

A show ready to be devoured bite by emotional bite, Modern Love harnesses the blanket appeal of love over a series of episodes - none of which are connected, transcending generations and broadening on-screen representation in one fell swoop.

"It's really nice when the studios and the people who are actually programming at large [understand] things needing to look different," nods former Oscar nominee Driver, best known for her roles in Good Will Hunting and The Phantom Of The Opera.

The forthcoming series breaks the traditional Hollywood mould when it comes to the casting of female leading roles - a subject Driver has been incredibly outspoken about in the past.

"If Amazon is doing this and millions of people are seeing this, to me, that feels like systemic change and this is how we do it," says Driver. "We just keep on including and telling the stories, and it stops being some kind of outlier - that a movie is for a particular set of people. It's for everybody. It's for all of us together. And this show does that brilliantly, by telling the stories that are true."

With Driver's episode, On The Serpentine Road, With The Top Down, set to open the eight-part series, fans are once again set to embark on what can only be described as the rawest of emotional roller-coasters.

Centred around Driver's character Stephanie Curran - a remarried widow whose vintage Triumph car is her last link to her late husband - viewers are invited into her life on the picturesque Irish coast.

With each journey evoking vivid memories of her past love, the vehicle becomes a private form of escapism for Stephanie. However, as finances worsen and the decades-old vehicle begins to fail, her current husband - entirely unaware of her emotional connection with the car - pragmatically suggests the time has come to sell it.

"I was angry with the husband for saying she needed to get rid of it," announces Driver in an impassioned manner. "My mum died this year and I have a lot of really beautiful memories that are objects of hers. I could never let them go, so I struggled with the concept of this woman having to get rid of this car."

A feeling all too relatable to the British actress, Driver elaborates, describing the way in which possessions become the object of your love when the person that you love is gone.

"The themes of love and grief are difficult for humans to metabolise. They're certainly difficult to do together," says Driver, in a nod to her character's initial resentment towards her partner. "And so, in film and television, they can often be incredibly sentimental and lose the element of truth.

"It's difficult to love at all after somebody has died. You're shut down, and you're completely cocooned from the rest of the world. So, to explore the idea of being able to come back to life - and that love does that for you - was really interesting."

It's a tale that sees a nostalgic notion of love and a weathered, yet equally valuable, vision of it placed side-by-side, a comparison that leads Driver's character to not only question her current life, but ultimately open up to her current husband in a truly unprecedented way.

"Thematically, it's a really interesting journey," says Driver. "If I let go of my grief and my pain over the people in my life who've died, does that mean that I love them less? How do I do that?

"The truth is, she wants to stay connected to her dead husband - she does not want to stop talking to him. That car is where she can do that. That's the resentment, in a way, that she has of her current husband [for] wanting her to sell it - but he doesn't have the whole story."

Describing the important takeaway message embedded within her episode, Driver emphasises the need to "speak up and speak your mind".

"The love with her current husband, it probably deepens because of it, because he's so kind and so accommodating and says, 'Of course you love him; of course you will always love that person'.

"He says, 'I saw that your heart was the biggest place I'd ever been and I saw that there was plenty of room for me in there as well', which is an incredibly generous, evolved way of looking at something - no offence, but particularly for a dude," laughs the actor.

"Sometimes your head gets in the way, and your judgment of what someone else is going to think stops you from telling your whole truth. We're not perfect," notes Driver, sentimentally. "As long as you can get there in the end."

All eight episodes of Modern Love are available to stream on Amazon Prime Video from Friday, August 13.