Undercover: Why the new BBC drama with Adrian Lester and Sophie Okonedo is Sunday night TV worth watching

Powerful performances from the two leads make for a convincing crime drama about so much more than race

Lies and betrayal: Sophie Okonedo and Adrian Lester as Maya and Nick in Undercover (BBC)

With War and Peace and The Night Manager leaving a troublesome hole in our Sunday night sofa plans, TV fans across the country are pegging their hopes for fresh distraction from the looming doom of Monday on the BBC’s new British crime drama, Undercover.

This article contains spoilers from episode one

Judging by the first episode, fears of a quality telly drought will have been soothed, or rather transformed into delight at the powerful performances of leads Adrian Lester and Sophie Okonedo; intrigue surrounding the multiple mysteries set up from the heart-racing opening; horror at a gruesome botched lethal injection and suspense for what the remaining five episodes could hold.

Undercover might be lead brilliantly by black actors but it didn’t take long for viewers to realise that, refreshingly, the race of its characters is by no means all that defines them. Nor are racial issues the major theme; not really. There are flashback scenes to police brutality at a black rights march 20 years prior, Okonedo’s Maya is on the brink of becoming the first black Director of Public Prosecutions and she is battling to clear an innocent black man’s name to save him from execution, but it is the gripping plot and intense, riveting acting that takes centre stage.

Lester plays the male lead as Nick in BBC crime drama Undercover (BBC)

It is when Lester’s Nick takes off his wedding ring before visiting his dying father in hospital that the darkness beneath his middle class family’s seemingly happy life is first hinted at. Several twists and turns later, it is revealed that Nick was an undercover police officer who has been lying to his wife for two decades, ever since they met at the 1996 political march her professional life as a barrister has been built upon.

Silk’s Peter Moffat began writing Undercover after learning of the shocking real-life examples of British women from protest groups being lured into relationships with undercover cops intent on spying on them to glean information that could help protect the police. Nick loves his wife and family while simultaneously betraying them in a deep and inevitably damaging way, and it is with this conflict between duty and conscience, head and heart that Undercover makes its hard-hitting impact.

Nick's secret life threatens to destroy his happy middle-class family (BBC)

Can Nick and Maya’s marriage survive Nick’s deceit? There’s a lot going on here both literally and emotionally, with multiple baffling strands to be tied up, but we’ll be back watching come 9pm next Sunday.