As if to prove that television’s appeal depends mainly on what it gives you to see, the BBC’s new headline serial SS-GB spends many millions giving you something you can’t hear... I wouldn’t have heard it anyway, because I’ve been going deaf for years and would not hear German invaders if they landed one at a time in my chimney and assembled in my living room to sing Wir fahren gegen Engeland...

In the current show, the triple agent is played by the best-looking young male actor since Johnny Weissmuller got the part of Tarzan. But DSI Douglas Archer (Sam Riley) has made a big mistake penetrating the British police force, because no one in Britain who is not an actor can understand a word he is saying. Luckily, the beautiful blond woman who catches his eye is an American, the weirdly named Barbara Barga, played by Kate Bosworth. My favourite character, though, is an SS officer, Dr Oskar Huth, played by Lars Eidinger with the appropriately pitiless bad manners. Rude enough to dominate Britain all by himself, he will be able, when the occupation is over, to open a dominance parlour in Chelsea and charge huge prices for beating people up. Do Archer’s tastes lie in that direction? From what he says, we will never know.