Einstein and Eddington BBC2, 9.10pm (Saturday) Outnumbered BBC1, 9.10pm (Saturday)

A clever-enough historical drama about big brains, Einstein and Eddington began by prompting one obvious question: everybody knows Albert Einstein, the crazily-coiffed German theoretical physicist who gave us relativity, E=MC2 and suchlike - but who in heck's this other guy?

E2 was revealed as Arthur Stanley Eddington, a secretly gay 25-year-old Quaker scientist hailed as "the best measuring man in England" in 1914 when appointed to head Cambridge Observatory. As Eddington, David Tennant wore an Edwardian tweed suit, rimless spectacles and a look of shining inquiry.

Crucially, what Tennant's Eddington was not was his best-known TV alter ego, Doctor Who. Like the Tardis's owner-occupier, Eddington might have been engaged in pushing back the boundaries of time and space, but he did so with dogged intellectualism and his sorely-tested religious faith, not the instant magic of a Time Lord.

Of course, young Eddington would have got nowhere without Einstein. And vice versa, it emerged, rather surprisingly. For theirs was an earth-shattering international partnership investigating the nature of gravity, conducted by letter, which transcended all the mass-murdering unpleasantness engendered by the First World War.

Dutifully repressing his forbidden homosexual ardour for a workmate, Eddington strove to rival the academic prowess of an illustrious Cambridge predecessor, Sir Isaac Newton. In contrast, lusty Einstein was at Berlin University, adulterising wildly instead of aiding Germany's war machine.

As the surprisingly carnal cerebralist who abandoned his wife and children, Andy Serkis boggled his eyes, grinned rakishly, bristled his moustache and growled. He charmed saucy Elsa into mistress-hood just by encouraging her to sing Schubert lieder to him.

"Beethoven makes me feel naked," Einstein purred, a physical physicist rather than a hands-off theoretician. The dastardly duo were soon going at it on a yoonie desk - unlike poor Eddington, who dared not name his unspeakable love for a Cambridge colleague newly called up for military service.

Sadly, the fellow perished at Ypres in a German attack: deadly chlorine gas, devised by Einstein's scientific colleagues in Berlin. Tennant was heartbreakingly effective in transmitting Eddington's grief and loss of Quaker spiritual certainty. And so ought to have ended the relationship between the two.

Thankfully, it didn't. Eddington's even-handed, open-minded commitment to truth wouldn't let it. He defied his brusque boss, Sir Oliver Lodge (the subject of a generously reined-in and non-scene-stealing performance, for once, by the mighty Jim Broadbent).

Luckily, too, Einstein realised he was married to his work, not burds, temporarily giving his mistress the pip. Eddington was simultaneously staging an experiment with a tablecloth, a loaf and an apple which convinced him that space has curves, due to the sun (or something: I am no boffin).

Shortly afterwards, an African total solar eclipse let Eddington confirm Einstein's theory of general relativity (without recourse to Doctor Who's sonic screwdriver). Hurrah!

Cheers, too, for superior family sitcom Outnumbered, which pondered death's bourn most funnily, especially when six-year-old Karen interred a deceased mouse, employing her teddy bear as a stand-in Pope. As voiced by the little moppet, the furry pontiff concluded his funereal address: "May the force be with you because you're worth it." Hurrah!