Life stars Alison Steadman, Adrian Lester and Peter Davison and features interweaving stories from a house, divided into flats, in Manchester.
Bartlett said of the BBC One drama: “I wanted to write about isolation and its opposite – community, about how we crave being connected to other people but at the same time often end up feeling lonely, or disconnected.
“I used to live in a flat that was part of a divided up old house.
“You could hear intimate details of your neighbours’ lives, but when we passed in the corridor we barely exchanged two words.
“I was fascinated in that apparent contradiction.”
And, he added that he he also wanted to reflect “how amazing people could be, when faced with the difficulties and tragedies of life. In every household in the country there are some of the biggest stories occurring, every day.”
Affair drama Doctor Foster, starring Suranne Jones and Bertie Carvel, was a huge success.
