Romola on Legacy.

TV Last night, in what's becoming a surprising routine in my dotage (I'm 39), I actually watched something while it was being broadcast on purpose, which was Legacy, BBC Two's cold war thriller based on Alan Judd’s novel of the same name, adapted by Paula Milne (White Heat, The Politician's Husband) and directed by Pete Travis (Vantage Point, Dredd). They worked together previously on Endgame the rather good apartheid film with William Hurt and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

 This came across like an episode of Spooks in which Harry had entered a coma and woken up in 1974 ala Life on Mars. Excellent performances from the cast and gorgeous candlelit photography (the contemporary blackouts creating a noirish feel) made it entirely watchable as an example of the kinds of single dramas which used to be the cornerstone of the schedules rather than rare experiments. Well worth catching on the iPlayer is you have ninety minutes to fill.

Romola Garai played one of the spies who was married to one of the other spies (Christian McKay in another one of his "I can't believe it's not Orson" roles on this occasion channeling Harry Lime) and has been around giving publicity interview. Here she is on BBC News talking about why she took the part:

"I want to play women with jobs, basically," Garai says of her own career criteria.

"It sounds like a very trite thing, but it's very easy to play female leads where the only thing you know about her is how she relates to the male. Whether or not she is pretty, or good in bed - she has no world of her own.

"If a writer is invested in a character enough to talk about what they do for a living, I think that's a good sign," the actress continues.

She told Digital Spy that during filming she met a real spy who gave her advise on how they make sure they aren't followed:

"There's a very easy way to do that, which is to constantly get to a road crossing, a natural place where you would look for cars," she said. "So you have to constantly cross the road as much as possible. It must be quite weird if you're crossing the road but you're looking behind you, and he said that as if it was an obvious thing.

"There were quite a few times afterwards where I went up to a road and looked left and right for traffic, but was also looking behind me. I thought, actually, it's very hard to do that in a natural way. And I'm not very observant!"

Oh there's wonderful quote at the Radio Times about her approach to acting. In general:

"It’s absolutely hilarious that I would be cast in a role like this. I’m really indiscreet and incredibly stupid and I can’t understand the plot of anything – even this script I was reading, saying, “I don’t understand”. I spend my whole life pretending so the idea of doing something where you'd have to pretend all the time is not appealing to me. We do enough made up stuff anyway. "

Doctor Who's going to be really fun in four years time...