TV review: The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies

In 2010, when Joanna Yeates was murdered, the police were having little success in tracking her killer. The tragedy had occurred in the quiet Christmas period when there's little news: everything shuts down, people are at home being snoozy and overfed, and there's little to report except the queues outside Next and the Royals going to church.

Into this lull broke the terrible Joanna Yeates murder. She was young, beautiful and clever, and had been killed in the safety of her flat in an elegant part of Bristol. To make the story complete, the city was charming and mysterious in the snow, and the killer was still at large.

The tabloids loved this and, to make it juicier for them, along came Christopher Jefferies, Joanna's eccentric landlord. A retired schoolteacher who said his prayers each morning, then carefully applied hairspray to his grey, wiry combover, he was a perfect oddball. The papers delighted in reporting his eloquent words which were delivered in his posh, slightly camp tone. They delighted further when locals, egged on by journalists, began speculating on his character. Overnight, this eccentric gentleman became an alleged Peeping Tom, a loner pervert who made sexual remarks and was clearly Jo's killer. There was no evidence against Jefferies - he simply looked weird, with his hair and his Bible and his fancy books and posh words.

Burn the witch! That was the mentality. Someone is daring to look different from us, so let's get him. Someone is using big words we don't understand, so knock him down.

This drama showed Jefferies to be all of these things: eccentric, eloquent, well-read, religious and with very strange hair, but he was not the weird loner behind the net curtain. Instead, he was shown having a rich social life: constantly at dinner parties where he charms his guests, then off to the gym, or to his French class, then to the cute deli for some sourdough bread and a chat with the assistant. Whenever seen alone he was quietly content, sipping fine wine, reading and cooking. He was also funny in a dead-pan way, able to accept mockery from his friends for not knowing what Strictly Come Dancing was. So he was portrayed as odd, but it was done with affection, not surliness.

The police burst into his quiet, civilised life. They barge into his flat on a dawn raid and arrest him for Joanna's murder. This is the most disturbing scene of the episode. He is a man who is always calm, eloquent and witty and, in an instant, is left shocked and afraid. Tumbled out of bed by the banging on the door, he stands in the hallway dishevelled and frightened. For the first time, his language deserts him. He tries to ask why he's being arrested but can barely form the words. The barbarians have overrun him. He is shocked into incoherence, and made small by it.

And the police have no respect. They enter the flat with their boots, dogs and equipment and desecrate the place. His furniture is scratched, the paintwork is smudged and his fine old books have their spines cracked and torn.

There is no space to be eccentric in this world. If you're not with us, you're against us. The idea of the quiet, civilised man against a philistine society is one Ray Bradbury warned us about in his short story, The Pedestrian, about a man out for a quiet evening stroll who is stopped and harassed by the police as they can't understand why he'd want to walk alone at night. Why is he not at home with the TV? They can't understand him and so he's suspect.

This drama is rare as it seeks to impart a lesson. It shows us the horrors we can stoop to if we don't make room for tolerance and difference and - yes - weirdness. We don't all care about Kim Kardashian and we don't all have a girlfriend and we might be content enough to read for hours in solitude. People who do things differently are splendid and brave, not a threat.

Christopher Jefferies is an oddball hero, of courage and sturdy character, and this excellent drama does him justice.