Critical reception was generally positive. In his overview of Moffat's celebrated "Press Gang", Paul Cornell said that the writer "continues to impress" with "Joking Apart". The "Daily Express" said that it was "flavoured with a delicious bitterness about the perfidy of women and the conscious-less nature of the male orgasm, it was plotted with the intricacy of a French farce". Another reviewer for the "Express" commented that "it's quite funny and an acute analysis" of the modern divorce, and that the first episode was "distinctly promising". Similarly "DVD Review" comments that "Moffat's distillation of his marriage melting down is as precise a piece of comic writing as you're likely to find."