A solid costume drama but Dame Helen has been miscast: Catherine the Great reviewed

It’s possibly not a great sign of a Britain at ease with itself that the historical character most likely to show up in a TV drama now seems to be Oswald Mosley. But the week after his starring role in Peaky Blinders ended, there he was again, right at the beginning of BBC1’s next Sunday-night drama. World on Fire opened with Mosley addressing a 1939 Manchester rally, where he duly whipped up his supporters and reminded the rest of us of the dangers of extremism.

Luckily, there were two people in the hall brave enough to protest: salt-of-the-earth northern lass Lois Bennett and her much posher and therefore much stiffer boyfriend Harry Chase. Less luckily, their reward was to be thrown into neighbouring police cells, from where they were collected by their even more carefully contrasted parents. Douglas Bennett (Sean Bean) impressively manages to be both more salt-of-the-earth and more northern than his daughter — and if Robina Chase (Lesley Manville) has ever made a non-snooty remark in her life, we certainly didn’t hear it on Sunday.