A gin-soaked mum and mischief in the sun — it’s perfect Sunday telly

Perfect Sunday night viewing requires period costume, exotic locations, a dash of sex (but nothing explicit) and lashings of laughs. Sounds simple on paper . . . but it’s pretty near impossible to achieve on screen.

We’ve been treated to some lavish serials this year, from War And Peace to Doctor thorne and Indian Summers, but The Durrells (ItV) was a masterclass in ideal Sunday telly — never too demanding, and yet completely satisfying.

It was based on the memoirs of naturalist Gerald Durrell, who wrote about his thirties childhood growing up on corfu with his three older siblings and their mother in My family And Other Animals.

Durrell described the 1955 book as a recipe with him as the cook, mixing the Ionian landscape, the fascinating wildlife and the lunatic eccentricities of his relatives to concoct a bestseller.

Originally, Durrell said, he intended to write only about the natural history of the Greek island, but he made the ‘mistake’ of introducing his family . . . and they took over.

Milo Parker, aged 13, was excellent as the young Durrell, so obsessed with studying animals that, when he discovered a barn owl living in the outside privy, he announced his intention of moving his bed in there.

At school in england, he was thrashed for feeding the rats behind the cricket pavilion: when his mother heard of this injustice, she was so incensed that she stormed into the headmaster’s study and denounced him as ‘a moron’.

Keeley Hawes was magnificent as the indomitable, gin-sozzled widow Louisa Durrell, who whisks her four teenage children to the untouched isle, decades before it was spoiled by package holidaymakers.

the actress has had a barnstorming week: last thursday she caused a sensation with her unheralded return to the BBc2 police drama Line Of Duty.

Viewers, including this one, were stunned as her jailed copper Lindsay Denton walked back into the plot. Keeley revelled in the stir she created: ‘thank you to everyone who kept the secret!’ she tweeted, adding emojis of the three deaf-dumb-and-blind monkeys.

Now here she was, less than 72 hours later, swigging from the bottle and turning a rifle on a salty sea-dog who dared to slap her rump. there can be no debate about who is currently Boss of the Box.

the Durrells delivered a cascade of carry On humour. Daisy Waterstone played 16-year- old Margo, sunbathing in a capacious woollen bikini that would have fitted a baby elephant, and mollifying an outraged Greek Orthodox monk by plying him with cigarettes.

Josh O’connor was oldest brother Lawrence, who would become famous for his erotic novels despite younger brother Leslie (callum Woodhouse) stealing the letter ‘X’ off his typewriter so he couldn’t keep writing about sex.

But while the Durrells knew exactly what it was doing, Under

cover (BBc1) didn’t have a clue. this six-part thriller already faced a tough task, to follow the Night Manager in the 9pm slot, but writer Peter Moffat couldn’t make up his mind what genre to adopt.

for 20 minutes the action switched between a prison in the American Deep South, where a British lawyer (Sophie Okonedo) was making her final visit to her client on death row, and a chaotic household in London with a runaway dog.

the main characters were played by black actors, a first for a major BBc1 drama. Sadly, the only one who made much dramatic sense was the condemned man (Dennis Haysbert).

But as he went to the execution chamber, the story took a weird supernatural twist and Okonedo collapsed from an epileptic fit, apparently suffering convulsions in sympathy. then she got up, gave herself a shake and carried on as if nothing had happened.

the title Undercover seems to point to her husband of 20 years, who has never mentioned he was a Special Branch copper when he met her, spying on the firebrand barrister and her Leftie friends.

Now she’s about to become Director of Public Prosecutions, so presumably she is regarded as slightly less of a threat to national security. If you can make any sense of it, well done. I couldn’t.