What would life in Britain be like if Germany had won the war? The new Sunday night series SS-GB (first episode, 19 February), based on Len Deighton’s 1978 novel, is not the first drama to have imagined a dystopian what-if version of the Second World War. It follows hard on the heels of the successful US series The Man in the High Castle, set in a post-war United States carved up by the occupying powers of Germany and Japan. In both dramas, the colours are murky and the mood is noir.

In SS-GB, occupied London is bomb-cratered and festooned with barbed wire. An opening shot shows us Buckingham Palace, one half wrecked, the other hung with the Nazi swastika. An antique dealer has been found murdered in a bedsit in Shepherd Market and the Metropolitan Police, now under German command, must find his killer. Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer, who is leading the investigation is, as one would expect, not your run-of-the-mill copper.