BBC Two’s flagship crime drama Peaky Blinders returns for another guilty dose of slo-mo walking, flying sparks and anachronistic soundtracks. In the opening episode “The Noose”, we’re served a familiar course of family disputes, sinister threats and violent outbursts – but when the delivery is this exciting, who cares if it’s not anything new?

Can it really be a quarter-century since that finest of all Merchant-Ivory film adaptations, Howards End, was first released? So it is, astonishingly, which surely means the time is ripe for a fresh celluloid take on EM Forster's enduring 1910 novel about morality, love and loss in Edwardian-era England.

Like a lot of people, I came late to Peaky Blinders, bingeing on the first two brutal, but undeniably brilliant, series like the proverbial box-set sensation it quickly became.

At its weakest The A Word is just Emmerdale with a twist of autism, especially when the drama swivels away from the little boy to focus on adult infidelities, a grumpy patriarch, sibling rivalries and comedy Poles wisecracking in subtitles.

Sky Atlantic’s German import is an intoxicating mix of intrigue and betrayal, set in the excessive days of the Weimar Republic. Gripping stories and extravagant production meet in the opening two episodes of this brilliantly promising Euro-noir.

Here we go again then. The “first series”, as the BBC are calling it after the fact, of I Know Who You Are slammed the brakes on and juddered to a bewildering halt back in the middle of August. Almost everyone who’d sat through the plot dodgems of those 10 episodes will have had the same reaction: eh?

Laughable though it frequently – oh go on then, always – is, Strike Back is obviously a target-rich environment for those of a thespian persuasion. The likes of Richard Armitage, Andrew Lincoln, Robson Green and Michelle Yeoh have passed through the show’s bullet-spattered portals over its previous five series, and for series six Warren Brown gets the gig as the special forces maverick out for retribution.

And now the end is near… and so Inspector George Gently faces his final case. Deemed too political to be broadcast in its original slot in May – 10 days before the General Election – Gently and the New Age was postponed until 8.30pm last night.

Beware – here be spoilers, though if you can make them out through the blizzard of cliché that engulfed the last double-bill of this thunderingly underwhelming Nordic noir then you’re already ahead of me.

The second helping of Doctor Foster (BBC One) looked for a long time as if it would taste exactly like the first. Another plate of hell hath no fury, please, with extra bile on the side. That was essentially the plot up until the end of last week’s episode, in which Simon Foster found himself evicted for the second time. What would Lady Bracknell say?