The BBC’s adaptation of John le Carré’s The Night Manager was a stunning triumph with Tom Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine, hotelier turned spy going deep cover in the operation of illegal arms dealer Richard Roper, the most appalling swine that ever crawled the Earth. A nation of women lost their shit and then their drawers as a result of the frankly embarrassingly handsome Pine. Coupled with the willowy goddess Jed viewers wondered and feared what a master race of their babies would look like. Beyond that they were transfixed by the show’s intrigue, danger and swashbuckling, crossing the globe from Cairo to Switzerland, to Baghdad and back again. Could Pine pull off the unthinkable and take down the untouchable Roper or would he wind up dead or ruined like so many before him?

TV critic James Donaghy is your guide through the mayhem. All six episodes of the breathless first series recapped in forensic detail for your reading pleasure.

To prospective readers: PLEASE do not read if you dislike puerile humour, have any common decency or concern for your fellow man. This will not be your thing. The rest of you scumbags: have at it.