This adaptation took the leap, though, interleaving Somerset and Henry VI’s wife, Margaret of Anjou (Sophie Okonedo), grunting in ecstasy with the screams of Gloucester being murdered in the Tower. Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays offer many opportunities to wallow in violence but, it has to be said, fewer to indulge in sex. The director Dominic Cooke used every camera trick in the book to focus our attention on him as, like a chess grandmaster, he plotted to take control of the king. The agent of Gloucester’s destruction turned out to be the Machiavellian Earl of Somerset, a scene-stealing, indeed, film-stealing turn by Ben Miles.

With lank hair, fleshy lips and a reedy voice, Tom Sturridge was a masterpiece of indecision and hopelessness as the teenage Henry, who was denuded of power by his obsequious protector, the Duke of Gloucester, played with Lord Grantham-like guilelessness by Hugh Bonneville.

Last night’s first episode (Henry VI Part I ) was a promising start. Featuring Benedict Cumberbatch as the hunchbacked Richard, it’s been hyped to the skies. The Hollow Crown now returns with three more films hewn from Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy, ending with Richard III, telling the story of the Wars of the Roses. It brought in a new generation of players (including Ben Whishaw and Tom Hiddleston) who knew how to act to camera, and brought iambic pentameter to life against a backdrop of Britain’s mighty buildings and rolling hills. The first four episodes of the BBC'S Shakespearean epic The Hollow Crown, charting the fall of Richard II and the rise of Henry V, set a new benchmark in TV adaptations of Shakespeare.

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