It is a precious hour of tranquillity, this vision of talented people giving their best, taking the job seriously but without being ridiculously overinvested or intense. The retention of perspective is rapidly become the most appealing thing about these shows.

You never get the sense that the filmmaker is pushing beyond prurient interest to uncover a deeper truth, much less discovering something within the subject that makes him seem theoretically redeemable, or at least recognizably human.

Uhtred’s trials intensify when he joins Alfred’s quest to unite the kingdoms into England, creating an epic backdrop for a handsome, stellar cast and expert storytellers to weave television’s latest addictive historical fiction.

The animating humanism of Scott’s film is irreducible. It’s a wry tribute to the qualities that got our species into space in the first place: our resourcefulness, our curiosity and our outsized, ridiculous, beautiful brains.

The 17-minute wire-walking sequence is the most majestic simulation of a real event since the ship sinking in Titanic, a dazzling triumph of photorealistic digital effects, which exhibits Zemeckis’ mastery of both CGI and pace.

It’s an emotional and moving portrait of life after cancer, and of the sort of equanimity that can come out of tragedy.