It would be difficult to make a bad drama from the tragicomedy of Major Charles Ingram in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, convicted with his wife of cheating their way to the prize money with a coughing accomplice planted in the audience. But Quiz is a belter. It takes a story you think you know, fills it with you’ve-got-to-be-kidding moments, gives it pathos and laughs and Michael Sheen as Chris Tarrant in Oompa-loompa orange foundation. It’s the most entertaining thing ITV has done in ages, and fair play to them for green-lighting a show which makes ITV executives seem awful.

James Graham has adapted his own play into a juicy three-part drama, with Matthew Macfadyen and Sian Clifford in the lead roles. In this version of the truth, Ingram is far from a villain. He’s a diffident but seemingly upstanding Middle England sort who finds the very idea of cheating distasteful. He doesn’t even like quizzes all that much. It is his wife, Diana, played by Clifford as a woman with all the warmth of a chest freezer, who loves playing them, and who signs him up for the show after appearing on it herself.

Graham takes things chronologically, so we start with the creation of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Celador boss Paul Smith (Mark Bonnar) pitches the concept as a glorified pub quiz: “A uniquely British invention combining our two greatest loves - drinking and being right.” Smith could be a pretty dry supporting role in the wrong hands, but Bonnar could bring intensity to a character even if he was playing one of The Flumps.