COLD WAR PARANOIA

Secrets And Spies: A Nuclear Game, 9pm, BBC2

THIS is one of those intricate docuseries, packed with expert analysis, that really get under the skin of their subject – here, the Cold War. It feels, at times, like it’s been pulled straight from the pages of a John le Carré novel. We start in 1982, described by Marina Litvinenko (pictured), widow of Alexander, in her thick Russian accent, as ‘a time when people in Soviet Union still believe 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, in the West and the Soviet Union.