Peter Kavanagh

The comedy in Simon Brett's People in Cars, directed by Peter Kavanagh, was also gentle, but Brett is a veteran and knows his audience well. The trilogy started with a man who has just performed a raid on a building society hijacking a car driven by a mother and her teenage son. This implausible set-up worked because Samantha Bond played divorcée Gilly with exactly the right blend of withering sarcasm and simmering anger. "God, you make me furious!" she tells the hijacker. "You burst into my car, burst into my life, threaten my son and then you start ordering me around just like my husband did, just like every other man in my life did!" Very soon, Nigel, the hijacker, realises there is something far more menacing than a replica pistol, and that is a middle-aged mum.