Warning: Here comes a ghastly gimmick to spoil any TV drama

Three little words you never want to hear in a TV drama popped up on screen after the first scene of Come Home (BBC1): ‘Two weeks earlier . . .’

It’s the fashionable way to kick off a serial, giving us a glimpse of some dramatic event later in the story and then back-tracking.

Television directors seem to think this generates instant excitement, but in fact it betrays a lack of confidence.

If writer Danny Brocklehurst doesn’t want to start at the beginning, then perhaps his beginning isn’t very good. The subtitle ‘Two weeks earlier’ might as well read: ‘Warning! here comes a dull bit.’

Brocklehurst did himself a real disservice, because the story of Greg ( Christopher eccleston), a motor mechanic in Northern Ireland whose wife has abandoned him and their three children, is emotionally intriguing and gripping.

eccleston is such a fine actor that we understood instantly Greg is a man in pain, and within a couple of minutes that he is barely coping as a father, burying himself in his work and distracting himself with dating websites.

he doesn’t know why his wife walked out and neither yet do we. Next week’s episode will be told from her perspective, so we can

GADGET OF THE NIGHT: In the butler’s pantry at Castle Drogo in Devon, on Secrets Of The National Trust (C5), Peter Purves discovered an electric teacup warmer — a giant coaster, wired up to keep your cuppa hot. Jeeves never had one of those.

expect to learn much more, but so far it’s inexplicable.

There are hints of controlling behaviour in Greg’s manner, little gestures and phrases that might simply reflect the macho culture in the background.

But we know he’s not violent, that he’s decent and sensitive, that he adores his children, and that he’s clueless about women — his new girlfriend moves herself and her son into his home with shameless ease.

Much of this was told without words. The camera watched eccleston and he silently conveyed everything we need to know — especially with a beautifully choreographed scene in which he sat in the dark, listening to the Velvet Underground and thinking obsessively about his absent wife.

The only weak scene was the one we saw twice, first as a flashforward that opened the show and, later, repeated frame-for-frame near the end of the episode.

Greg broke into his wife’s house and was trapped in the bathroom when she came home. It smacked of farce: when a man hides behind a shower curtain, viewers are half expecting his trousers to fall down.

Michael Portillo was playing for farce in Great Indian Railway Journeys (BBC2) as he washed an elephant behind the ears and allowed her to soak him with her water cannon of a trunk. Then he took a lesson in polo from a maharajah, sitting astride a pony with the grace of Action Man balanced on a beach ball.

he’s definitely more comfortable with human beings, smiling and shaking hands left and right as he strolls through crowded train carriages.

Barely a month seems to go by without a new adventure for the dandy ex-Defence Secretary.

he’s only just finished a tour of the Caucasus, and just weeks before that he was in the United States.

The more television he makes, the less seriously he seems to take it.

Visiting the Taj Mahal, he decided to freshen up first. The camera focused on his face and pulled out slowly to reveal he was lying in a shallow bathtub, with handfuls of red rose petals scattered on the water’s surface to protect his modesty.

Languidly, he reached out one hand to pour himself a glass of champagne. Well, it beats being hosed down by an elephant.