WHAT’S HOT TO WATCH TODAY
BBC1’s new drama MRS WILSON (9pm) sees one of its stars, Iain Glen, doing something he seems to have made a speciality, acting-wise – namely, dropping dead from a heart attack in episode one.
Here, though, it doesn’t mean it’s the last we’ll see of him, because much of this three-part story is played out in flashback.
It’s actually an amazing tale, based on real events, with Ruth Wilson starring as her own grandmother.
The real-life Alison Wilson was married for 20-odd years to Glenn’s character Alec, a novelist, until his heart suddenly packed up on him one Thursday lunchtime in April 1963.
Her despair at his untimely death, however, was soon overshadowed by a startling discovery – that she was never really his wife.
As we see in this first episode, the arrival on her doorstep of a total stranger, claiming to be the real Mrs Wilson, leaves her profoundly shaken. But worse is to follow, as she comes to discover this woman is telling the truth.
Alex, we learn in the wartime flashback bits, met Alison while working for the secret services, hers being a lowly position in the same department. But when they later tied the knot, there were bits of his past he kept quiet about – not just that he’d been married three times but that he’d never actually divorced any of those previous wives. ELSEWHERE tonight, Ian Wright fronts an excellent football documentary OUT OF THEIR SKIN (10pm, ITV4, concluding tomorrow), charting the emergence of black players within the game and recalling the horrific abuse the pioneers had to endure.