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This dark, seventeenth-century historical thriller takes its lead from Tom Hardy’s Taboo and Peaky Blinders, bringing shady alleys and violence to period drama. There’s something of the vanity project to this three-parter – Kit Harington co-produces and stars as his own ancestor Robert Catesby, which I suppose is useful if you’re looking for semi-accurate on-screen historicity (take it with a pinch of salt, though, as Harington is also descended from Charles II). After seven years in the colossal ensemble of Game of Thrones who can blame him for wanting more input – though shouldering the burden of ‘white dude chosen one’ who rises from bastard son to showrunners’ avatar in one of the world’s biggest TV shows isn’t exactly a rough gig. With Thrones on its last season, it’s about time we got to see what else he can do on the small screen. This is the story of the Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament known for spawning Guy Fawkes’ Night. Fawkes (Tom Cullen) is given only a peripheral role here, looming thuggishly up at the end of episode one. The challenge of the genre is to make inevitable history seem at least temporarily evitable, and this miniseries’ convincing dialogue and surprisingly gripping tone almost does the trick.

It’s 1605, Elizabeth I is dead, James VI of Scotland has become James I of England, and Protestant persecution of Catholics is escalating. We open on an excruciatingly tense twenty-minute scene in which, after taking mass in secret, Catholic Catesby and his family, including cousin Anne (Liv Tyler), see their home searched for signs of “rancid popery” – and it doesn’t get much more popish than finding a Jesuit in a trunk clutching religious artefacts. What follows are two gruesome torture-executions; if there’s one thing the series doesn’t obscure, it’s the horror of religious oppression.

Mark Gatiss reprises his role as Sherlock’s Mycroft – sorry, spymaster Robert Cecil – as one of the villains, while Harington plays up Catesby’s role as ringleader, loudly challenging judges and walking with a brooding, gruff stride only slightly marred by a furtive expression that says he expects to be accosted by Jacobean Vogue at any moment. I didn’t spend the entire time thinking Jon Snow had turned up on set after taking a wrong turn on the way to Winterfell, so I guess that counts as a win.