He might not be a household name, but Martin Engstroem is classical music’s man behind the curtain, a quiet but significant force in the industry for some 40 years. Although his career has seen Engstroem by turns as major artist agent and head of A&R for Deutsche Grammophon, it is as founder and general director of the Verbier Festival – this year celebrating its 20^th anniversary – that he has achieved perhaps his greatest successes.

Take a spoonful of paranoia thriller Arlington Road and shake'n'bake it with a dollop of Homeland and you'd have the bare skeleton of The Americans, tonight's new night import from the American FX channel on ITV. It's 1981, and in the midst of Washington DC suburbia, where the lawns are manicured and dad washes the car on Sundays, lurks an unseen threat. It's married-with-kids couple Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings, who are sleeper agents of the KGB.

When I first approached John Adams with the idea of making a documentary about him, he gently but firmly turned me down: he had unequivocally bad memories of a film made a few years back, an uncomfortable ride with a director who thought nothing of editing a sequence in which John spoke about one piece, while a completely different one was being played to illustrate his comments. When John had objected, the director in question had dismissively refused to make any changes.