I had imagined that eventually a serious novelist would tackle the bewildering and important subject of historic sexual abuse in the world of light entertainment. But it seems – and this says quite a lot about our literary culture – that television has got there first with National Treasure (Tuesdays, 9pm), in which Robbie Coltrane stars as Paul Finchley, an ageing comedian who wakes up one morning and finds himself accused of rape. Its writer is Jack Thorne, whose work for TV includes (with Shane Meadows) the This Is England series, and whose Harry Potter show is currently playing to predictably full houses in the West End.
I can’t claim to be a fan of his – I walked out of another of his plays – but on the evidence of one episode, this is superbly done. Not only does it have a certain distasteful veracity, but even better, the script refuses to do all the work. No hand-holding, no neat answers; much is just left unsaid. It is, in other words, about as challenging as British television gets these days.
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