The advantage of this new three-part adaptation of Thackeray’s 1848 classic (26 May to 9 June) is that it features the author’s great-great-great-grandson, Al Murray, in the guise of narrator. Sounding not wholly unlike his alter-ego the Pub Landlord (“It’s showtime”), Murray whips up a storm in a role that, you suspect, writer Jim Poyser cooked up for him with the deliberate aim of solving a hulking procedural problem.