Infertility

One woman had reached the age of 41 and discovered that time had run out; another had been through failed IVF treatments so often she was reaching the end of her rope.

These stories were told with great sensitivity.

The facts of a fertility lottery that had cost one couple £16,000, Britain's legal restrictions and the ethics of embryo manipulation – expect right-to-life violence as the series develops – were meanwhile laid before us with reasonable subtlety.

You were left wondering, nevertheless, if The Family Man will be able to maintain a balance between Eve's character, the riven hero, and the people whose lives depend on his science.

For the most part the dialogue was restrained, even terse.

You began to believe that Marchant had earned his pass mark.

Then he yielded to temptation and gave Stowe the one speech you should never hear in such a drama: "All I've ever wanted to do was to help couples, to make them happy.

But I can't play God." Playing God is the writer's job.

A Place in the Sun and No Going Back were both inflicted on France this week, and on much the same region, the glorious south-west.

In the former, Amanda Lamb was urging a Blackpool couple to realise their dreams of bliss by getting in on th...

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