IAN HYLAND

on last night’s telly

Summer Of Rockets, BBC Two ★★★★

Fans of Keeley Hawes were no doubt indebted to BBC Two for dropping this new six-parter into the schedules last night.

Without it there was a real danger that we could actually go a week without seeing her on screen.

Only kidding. I’m a huge fan. More often than not over the past five years

her presence in a TV drama has been a guarantee of quality.

It was no coincidence that BBC One’s massive hit Bodyguard started to go off the boil shortly after her character left.

Speaking of big BBC One hits, I bet the schedulers wish they had put this Stephen Poliakoff Cold War epic, in which Hawes, right,

plays the wife of a fast-rising Tory MP, on the main channel.

I suspect it would have fared better than Russell T Davies’s Years And Years, the apocalyptic glimpse into the future which, presumably, failed to foresee that only 1.5 million people would tune in for its second episode. Summer Of Rockets is far more accessible, both in terms of story and cast – Hawes’s co-stars include Timothy Spall,

Toby Stephens,

Lucy Cohu and

Linus Roache. Set

in 1958, against the backdrop of the space race, nuclear testing and general mistrust of anything Russian, it tells the story of the Russian-born Jewish inventor and hearing aid supplier to the rich and famous, Samuel Petrukhin (Stephens).

The opener got off to a slow and mysterious start but by the end it was clear Samuel was about to become embroiled in something that will be much more dangerous and exciting than hearing aids.

Not that I’m saying hearing aids are boring, obviously.

‘‘ There was a real danger we could go a week without Keeley on TV