A tense new action drama could be a big hit for the BBC

TV pick of the week

Tom Stoppard's BBC2 adaptation of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End has sharply divided opinions – baffling and boring as many as it has beguiled – but on one score the consensus has been universal. And that concerns the pellucid, daisy-fresh performance of 22-year-old Australian actress Adelaide Clemens as Valentine Wannop, the bobbed suffragette who manages to breathe passion into Benedict Cumberbatch's crusty, duty-bound "last Tory", Christopher Tietjens.

TV pick of the week

As Ronna and Beverly's series begins, Gerard Gilbert feels like a change

TV pick of the week: The Thick of It

Matthew Rhys might be a proudly Welsh-speaking member of LA’s ‘Tafia’, but he can act more Santa Monica than the natives. Now, he tells Gerard Gilbert,  he’s swapping a quintessential US melodrama for a classic British costume drama.

TV pick of the week

Stephanie Beacham was blacklisted by Hollywood for not toeing the line, and went shoulder pad to shoulder pad with Joan Collins in Dynasty. But when she is being plain Stephy, she's a partially deaf, light-hearted grandma right at home in the supermarket…

A bleak cityscape at night, set to a pulsating musical score. In the corner of the screen the words “Day 1” appear before we cut to a murder scene. It could be an archetypal out take from the hit Danish drama Forbrydelsen, or The Killing, except that the city is Nottingham and this is a BBC drama with a British cast.