Without doubt, House of Saddam (BBC Two, Wednesday, 30 July, 9pm) was the must-watch of the week. It seems, like me, the TV has wilted in the rare English heat. So it was quite apt that on the day it rained, something came along to get one’s teeth into. However, there was a niggling feeling that bugged me prior to viewing that this first in this four-parter wouldn’t live up to the hype.

Covering Saddam Hussein, in any capacity, is no small task. I presumed that they would have to get a universally (well almost) loathed character and humanise him somehow. I’ve seen Hitler, Pinochet and other tyrants in dramas before, and they’ve usually missed the mark. However, in the opening moments of this programme, with casting that, from the off, looked sublime, it certainly seemed that it was going to do the trick.

From the word go, the heat of the Middle East was captured. Instead of the dry heat of battle that we’ve all seen in a thousand news reels, we were taken into a seductive, sepia tinged exotic Iraq. In a tried-and-tested move that’s been seen in many biopics of bad people, we saw a loving, loyal family man in Saddam, before making a quick switch to the ruthless and menacing. Like most cold-blooded murderers, it hinted that Saddam was a bit of a mummy’s boy as well. In under ten minutes, Saddam was shown as cruel, ambitious, unsettlingly calm and all the things you associate with the truly despicable.

However, oddly, despite the loathsome behaviour, and let’s be honest here, we all know what Saddam was capable of and what he did in his life, Igal Naor manages to keep Saddam just warm enough to warrant continued investment. This is quite a staggering feat as we see Saddam ordering some seriously graphic murders (point blank, close range, firing squad head shots). Even at an early juncture in the show, I started thinking ‘This is an award-winning performance‘. There was something almost Shakespearean about the way he played it.

The rise of Saddam was dispatched pretty quickly. From inciting incredible fear to those that surrounded him (executed with aplomb by the whole cast) to the more familiar guerilla tactics of bombings and attacks on the streets of Baghdad, in TV terms, it was pretty much nailed. I can’t say whether it was historically spot-on… I’m no political-historian… but in terms of a televisual spectacle, it certainly lived up to what I’d hoped it would be. In amongst the gore and power struggles where other scenes that were equally powerful. The death of Saddam’s mother was intense and the Saddam’s wooing of a woman, right in front of her husband, seethed with venom. As a whole, the cast acted out of their skin.

Production values, start-to-finish, were as impressive as the cast. Stock footage nestled in with recreations of speeches and spliced in was snippets of propaganda cartoons and films. The latter managed to colour the programme and give a real feel of the period. Of course, I’ve no idea if that’s true or not, but this is hardly the point. I felt like a snapshot and that is the whole point of these types of shows. Instead of being cold, detached and generally reviewer-like about the whole thing, I was completely sucked in. For this, the whole cast and crew deserves a pat on the back.

Naturally, it felt a bit odd enjoying a show about something so terrible; about a man responsible for the loss of so many innocent lives and so much cruelty. However, many brilliant programmes and brave actors try to tackle such things. Can this show sustain the tension and menace over four episodes? On this first showing, it certainly seems so. We all know how this ends and we all know, in a roundabout way, how we get there. However, this show, judging by this first offering, is something that really deserves to be stuck with to conclusion. Great, but grisly.