Joanna Scanlan

Few TV thrillers have been favourably compared to Tarantino, the Coen brothers and Wes Anderson but Two Brothers Pictures’ ambitious six-part Boat Story, starring Daisy Haggard, Tchéky Karyo and Paterson Joseph, is no run-of-the-mill action series.

This multi-layered show, which started its run on BBC One in late November, begins conventionally enough, with Janet (Haggard) out walking on a wintry Yorkshire beach. However, the down-on-her-luck Janet discovers a washed-up boat containing two dead bodies and cocaine worth millions.

Armando Iannucci, who cut his creative teeth on such wondrous radio fare as the news lampoon On the Hour, revealed recently that the inspiration for creating his era-­defining political satire The Thick of It, was the Iraq war. He was infuriated by what he saw as Prime Minister Tony Blair’s willingness to “twist the narrative” in order to justify his support for what many regarded as a woefully ill-thought-through conflict.