Hiddleston’s gradual evolution from smug remove to deep involvement, motivated first by lust, then a flickering sense of duty (he ditches the suit and tie and literally rolls his sleeves up at this point), then anger and then – the most powerful motivating force of all, perhaps – guilt, was utterly convincing. “Something stirred, I suppose,” he told Colman’s spymaster Angela Burr at the end. “What are you prepared to do about it?” she fired back. We’ll be finding out over the next five weeks.

One reservation, though – I’m finding it easier to buy Tom Hiddleston as a suave, Cary Grant-ish night manager out of his depth, vomiting in the loo after encountering his arch enemy, than I am an Iraq War veteran who’s seen too much, as arresting as his opening stroll through the carnage may have been. But, if this was the unofficial Bond audition some have suggested, there’s plenty of time for a little more oomph. How about a Moonraker-style cable-car confrontation for a kick-off?

Richard Roper

Initially introduced as a full-bore philanthropist, Hugh Laurie’s character is wisely held back until the final third of the episode. In his absence, Roper is established as a deeply amoral man who can cow a brute like Freddie with one phonecall then quash potentially damaging government enquiries with another. He is, we’re told, “the worst man in the world”. So I felt slightly guilty for my relief when he finally appeared, emerging from a helicopter at Pine’s alpine hotel for a meeting about *ahem* “combine harvesters”. What had until that point been a compelling but slightly humourless affair was injected with vigour and life, jogged along by the sort of bombastic horns that welcome Alan Sugar into the boardroom. “So pleasing to wake up the f------ Germans,” he snarled (Roper, not Sugar).