Belgravia
ITV, Sundays, 9pm
If you want to know how afternoon tea was invented, Belgravia is the show for you. To be fair, this historic moment arrives midway through the opening episode, which, by that point, has already taken us through the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, killed off a few seemingly major characters and jumped 26 years in time. Writer Julian Fellowes, of Downton Abbey fame, does not mess about when it comes to ruthlessly lean storytelling. His cunning gambit in this suitably lavish new series, which ITV is clearly hoping will be the new Downton, is to introduce us to the main characters – the nouveau riche Mr and Mrs Trenchard (Tamsin Greig and Philip Glenister) and their offspring – but just when we think we’re getting to know them, it pulls the rug from under us by skipping ahead a quarter of a century. It’s a bold narrative coup that smartly disguises the blatant similarities between this show and Downton. It’s not long before the story cuts between the wealthy family upstairs, living in their massive house in the most sought-after area of 1850s London, and their poor servants downstairs, where it’s so dark we can barely make out that it is indeed Tamsin Greig’s TV husband Paul Ritter from Friday Night Dinner who’s playing the butler, Turton. Other, frankly more important, revelations come tumbling out of the closet, as it turns out quite a lot more happened during those missing 26 years than we ever suspected. By the end of the opener, I’ve already become fully invested in the Trenchards and their household, as well as learning about those surprisingly fascinating origins of afternoon tea.