Sean O'Grady

A sort of Sunday night medico-crime BOGOF offer for the viewer, and it works. .... Doctor Lucy is supposed to be a challenged, yet sympathetic, cool character, but I’m afraid she just leaves me cold – like too many of her patients, unfortunately.

I can’t tell you if they or Jack succeed, but I can say that you will definitely be as surprised as you will be horrified as this superbly crafted intricate tale twists its tail.

The Assassin is also spoiled by being overly derivative, to the point of being distracting. .... None of that is criminal, and doesn’t stop The Assassin from being intriguing and very, very nearly working – but it renders it frustrating.

I’ve been entertained way, way beyond expectations. So, yes, I think I will have another slice, thank you.

As Prue Leith puts it with her usual fresh-from-the-oven homely warmth: “Same old Bake Off. Familiar. Comforting. Lovely.” ... Matt Lucas is an excellent choice to replace Sandi Toksvig, adding a pinch of wit and surrealism to the usual mix of weak puns and painful innuendo. ... Poor old Noel Fielding, still loping around the GBBO tent like a stray lurcher, seems strangely diminished by the arrival of the diminutive Lucas, who out-bants him with a bit too much ease.

There are too many contestants making too many cakes, strange to say, which makes viewing harder work than it needs to be, and, if I were king, I’d bring back Mel and Sue and their merciless innuendo. For now, it’s all getting a bit claggy in the big marquee.

Lovely people, too, but it is, in truth, a bit dull, a bit too wholemeal wholesome, and I’m not sure what they would have done without that chicken with a funny name to vary the pace a bit.

They were very fussy, the girls, during the “coupling up” sessions, two of the blokes ending up on the “subs bench”, Darwinian dead ends waiting for extinction. .... It’s vulgar, vulgar, vulgar. Obviously.

Undemanding but moderately satisfying crime dramas, like a good murder, are much harder to execute than they look.

This is superb Sunday night viewing, and has a highly crafted, sinister, intriguing and, at times, Satanic quality that should keep you enthralled. Strike: Troubled Blood, in other words, is the BBC at its best.