COLD WAR PARANOIA

Secrets And Lies: The Nuclear Game, 9pm, BBC2

THIS is one of those intricate and involving docuseries, packed with expert analysis, that really get under the skin of their subject — here, the Cold War. It also feels, at times, like it has been pulled straight from the pages of a John le Carré novel. We start in 1982, described by Marina Litvinenko (pictured), widow of murdered Russian defector Alexander, as ‘a time when people in the Soviet Union still believed in the reality of nuclear war’. It is essentially the story of how close we came to pushing the button, told in the words of intelligence operatives working at the time, both here and in the Soviet Union. When, in 1983, the deeply paranoid Yuri Andropov took over as Soviet leader, the threat level was higher than ever before. Back on home soil, not everyone in British intelligence was happy with tactics being used against our own people. All three episodes are available on BBC iPlayer tonight.