IT can't be very often that a story like the one on which BBC drama Mrs Wilson is based upon lands in a scriptwriter's lap. Even more remarkable is the fact that it's all true.

Inspired by the memoir of Ruth Wilson's family’s complicated history, Mrs Wilson stars the Luther and The Affair actress playing her own grandmother, alongside Iain Glen (Game Of Thrones), Keeley Hawes (The Durrells, Ashes To Ashes) and Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve) in a period drama that is jaw-dropping in its depiction of the sorrow caused by one man's duplicitous past.

Set between 1940s and 1960s London, the series follows Alison Wilson (Wilson), who thinks she is happily married until her husband dies and a woman turns up on her doorstep claiming that she is the real Mrs Wilson. Alison is determined to prove the validity of her own marriage - and Alec’s (Glen) love for her - but is instead led into a world of disturbing secrets.

In real life, Alexander Wilson was a writer, spy and secret service officer who served in the First World War before moving to India to teach as a Professor of English Literature, where he began writing spy novels. In the 1930s he enjoyed great success with his novels being reviewed in The Telegraph, Observer and the Times Literary Supplement amongst others. Whe he passed away in 1963, his sudden death is the cue for a catalogue of recriminations as Alec's shady past and ability to switch between partners, wives, addresses and careers suggests a man who began to enjoy his life in espionage a little too much.

There is so much to recommend here it is hard to know where to start. Anyone who watched Wilson portray the tragic Alison in The Affair will know what an affecting actress she can be, but here she manages to play both the younger, innocent Mrs Wilson and the older more careworn version to stunning affect and often by simply wearing her hair up or down.

We are yet to properly enter the 1960s of course so the up tight and buttoned down atmosphere that pervades through so much of the action is stifling and perfectly captured by Wilson and the disillusioned, chain-smoking Shaw, who is clearly born to play spy masters after her brilliant turn in Killing Eve.

Slow and thoughtful, the hour long drama unravels over time like one of Alec's many lies and by the end you'll be as hooked as one of the poor women who fell for them.