PAUL SIMPER

THERE are plenty of inquiries going on at the moment. We’ve got inquiries into government sleaze, UK steel, the European Super League… crikey, we’ve even got one into influencers. If that sounds like more than enough to be getting on with, do still make room for another in your life – one spun into a new TV drama starring Toby Jones that’s more fierce and fascinating than most.

‘Drama is at its most interesting when it’s inconclusive, when it’s uncomfortable, when it unsettles you, when it doesn’t sort out goodies and baddies, when it doesn’t leave you with a comfortable feeling,’ says Jones. ‘All of which this has.’

Jones plays disgraced human rights lawyer Phil Shiner in BBC2’s Danny Boy, which succeeds in exploring the grey areas of combat and its ramifications during the Iraq war.

Danny Boy is set during the 2009 Al-Sweady public inquiry, which investigated claims that British soldiers murdered 20 Iraqis and abused nine others after a gunfight, known as the Battle of Danny Boy, with a Shia militia at a UK checkpoint north of Basra in May 2004. The inquiry lasted five years and cost £24.6million.

In Shiner’s sights is Colour Sergeant Brian Wood, previously a corporal in the Army, and decorated by the Queen with the Military Cross in recognition of his leadership, courage and selfless action on that day. Played by Anthony Boyle, who spoke extensively with Wood before filming, we see the soldier during the conflict and then struggling to adjust to civilian life after Iraq. There are night terrors, the breakdown of relationships with his wife, father and son – and then the effect of the inquiry on all of them.

‘What I found really exciting and exhilarating when I read the script were the grey areas where the truth was lying in between, and then not knowing how I felt,’ says Boyle, last seen as a young Jewish firebrand in Sky Atlantic’s The Plot Against America. ‘At times I was on Brian’s side. At times I was on Shiner’s side.