The Politician’s Husband

There have been weeks, I’m sure you will recall, when I have griped in these pages about the slim pickings to be found in the TV schedules and I’ve struggled to find anything worthy of your attention. And then there’s this week.

The Politician’s Husband, starting this week (Thursday at 9pm on BBC Two), is a reminder of how television should be. It’s a big, brainy, sexy political drama with a splendid cast and no compromise made for lightweights. It’s set in the hermetic world of modern politics, where everyone went to university with everyone else and it isn’t unknown for two top-flight MPs to be married to one another.

David Tennant is the titular politician’s husband: Aiden Hoynes. He’s a political big beast whose leadership bid has led to exile from the cabinet. A vengeful prime minister has promoted Hoynes’s wife Freya (Emily Watson) to Cabinet. Freya has to date, backburnered her ambitions in favour of her husband’s career, but that’s set to change.

The PM isn’t the only person who underestimates Freya and imagines she can be manipulated. In one lovely bit of dialogue Hoynes tells his wife, ‘This is an opportunity to prove you’re your own person. Nobody’s puppet,’ and then with scarcely a breath, ‘I’ll email you the bullet points to get you word-perfect.’

There’s a cracking supporting turn from Roger Allam as an oleaginous chief whip. It’s a bit confusing as he played a not dissimilar part in The Thick Of it, but he really is the best at this kind of role. And he gets some brilliant lines.

The line between fact and fiction (and other fiction) is further blurred by a pivotal appearance from Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark.

Jack Shepherd pops up as Hoynes’s dad, who acts as the ambitious MP’s conscience – saying a lot of the things that we’d like to be able to say to real politicians. The challenges the Hoyneses face at Westminster are compounded by crises on the home front, too. I’m not sure if the script is 100 per cent accurate but if it is, non-Cabinet MPs don’t seem to have much to occupy their working day.

The Politician’s Husband continues next week, but even though I was on deadline to turn in this column I had to watch the second part straight away. The combination of political intrigue and domestic drama is an addictive cocktail.

And that delicious cocktail leaves me hardly any space for ice cream. Specifically The Ice Cream Girls, an engrossing murder-mystery on ITV1 (Friday at 9pm) that in any other week might be the highlight. It tells the story of two women who, 17 years ago, were accused of the murder of one of their schoolteachers. When they meet again, long-concealed secrets are brought to light.

So there you are: two bits of unmissable TV. Remind me of this week next time I complain that there’s nothing on.