Les Misérables, BBC One

If you’ve been wondering what screenwriter Andrew Davies has been up to since adapting War And Peace for the BBC in 2016, Sunday night revealed the answer: he’s been on his sofa reading Les Misérables and figuring out how to cram its 1200 plus pages into 360 minutes of television without losing the bits people loved from the musical (except the songs of course) while also staying true to the original and thereby revealing to those who did love the musical some of the other aspects they might have missed by not reading the book. Got that?

It was a commission which required a nimble pen and quite a juggling act. Luckily, nobody does exposition dumps with the finesse of Andrew Davies. His feel like graceful dustings of salient facts and throughout episode one they scattered around our feet like so much falling snow as we met the characters whose personalities, rivalries and (to use an icky 21st century phrase) life choices will determine the course of the action. Partly, anyway: history and political events will do much of the rest, which is why Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel is such a widescreen, blockbusting epic in any language or genre.

In Davies’s capable hands we were treated to a sort of classy Coles Notes version, but with lavish special effects and an all-star cast led by a heavily-bearded Dominic West as the unlikeable (so far) anti-hero Jean Valjean; David Oyelowo as his nemesis, Inspector Javert; and Lily Collins as Fantine, the Parisian seamstress who in episode one fell in love with (and was subsequently dumped by) posh young buck Felix (Johnny Flynn).

We also glimpsed a young Marius Pontmercy (Raphael J Bishop) and in a thrilling opening scene amid the post-Battle of Waterloo carnage we watched Thénardier (the always watchable Adeel Akhtar) steal valuables from the dead or, in the case of Marius’s father, Colonel Pontmercy, the merely injured. Later, in another of the chance encounters which drive the novel, a now-limping and scarred Pontmercy passed Fantine and her friends in the street and exchanged a polite bonjour.

If there was a weak link it was Collins as Fantine. So far, so prettily insipid, though as one of the novel’s great tragic characters she needs to start from a position of equilibrium if the downward trajectory is to have any meaning or emotional clout. For Valjean, on the other hand, the only way is up after 19 years on the prison hulks for the crime of stealing a loaf of bread, though he’ll forever have Javert’s scornful words – “Whatever you think, you can never win” – ringing in his ears.

A country in turmoil and licking its wounds. A continent divided. Inequalities and injustices apparent at every turn. You don’t have to look far for the contemporary resonances, even if they’re as much accidental as deliberate. Either way, Les Misérables seems an appropriate Sunday night entertainment for our own turbulent times.