Einstein and Eddington (BBC2) proved that there is still intelligent drama on TV. It mapped the relationship between Albert Einstein and Arthur Eddington around the time of the First World War. As a stolid defender of Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity, Eddington had been appointed Director of the Cambridge Observatory but he became increasingly fascinated by the work of Einstein, who had been lured from Zurich to Berlin with the offer of a professorship. The drama showed both men rebelling against their superiors’ chauvinism, and refusing to get involved in the war. Eddington was a Quaker, and Einstein later said “I am an absolute pacifist . . . It is a feeling that possesses me, because the murder of men is disgusting.”

The two main roles were brilliantly acted by Andy Serkis and David Tennant. I didn’t expect so much from them, as I find Serkis’s Frenchified English nearly incomprehensible in Little Dorrit, and Tennant mugged outrageously in Dr Who. Yet Serkis conveyed the slipshod eccentricity of Einstein, while Tennant caught the uptight character and principled honesty of Eddington. The writer Peter Moffat was unafraid to expound difficult subjects like astronomy and mathematics – although I still don’t understand the Theory of Relativity (I suppose it’s all relative).

The only dubious moment came when Arthur Eddington said “I swear on all that I hold dear” (Quakers surely never take oaths). But otherwise it was a heartening portrait of two men united by science and wrestling with injustice. One of the most moving scenes showed Eddington befriending some German shopkeepers who were being victimised by Cambridge bigots.

Leslie Hutchinson, popularly known as ‘Hutch’, was victimised by the People newspaper when it discovered his affair with Edwina, wife of Lord Mountbatten. High Society’s Favourite Gigolo (Channel 4) told the story of the singing pianist who was born in Grenada, emigrated to America but moved to Paris, deterred by American racism. In France and then Britain, Hutch became a cabaret star beloved by the upper classes who frequented fashionable night-clubs. But his affair with Edwina scandalised the Royal family, which insisted that Edwina take the People to court for libel (she won the case by lying that she had never met Hutchinson).

Hutch regained his prestige by entertaining the troops during the Second World War but his career declined thereafter, especially when even the aristocracy took a liking to new young performers like the Beatles. Hutch was portrayed as a rather unsympathetic character: a social climber who neglected his family and the numerous children he fathered with several women. Hutch even disparaged the new wave of Caribbean immigrants who came to Britain in the fifties. Although he seems virtually forgotten today, older listeners may still recall with pleasure what Peter Gammond called Hutch’s “rich, resonant ‘milk chocolate’ voice”.

Channel 4 could have made a season called “Black entertainers in Britain”, as this week also brought The Jacksons Are Coming, which followed some of the Jackson Five (well, only Tito and Jackie) as they came house-hunting in Devon. Apparently they wanted to find somewhere they would not be hounded by the press (fat chance!) but in fact the idea came from the Jackson family’s British bodyguard, who saw it as a chance to cash in on their fame.

Not the end of civilisation again! Survivors (BBC1) is a serial about the few people who survive a flu pandemic. The plot is remarkably similar to The Survivors, a series by Terry Nation which was broadcast in the mid-seventies, although this one is said to be “based on the novel by Terry Nation”. At any rate, there is a disastrous outbreak of over-acting which wipes out all but the predictably ill-assorted survivors. It is such a clichéd plot that you can foresee the probable outcome. As the heroine, actress Julie Graham will probably save the world, even though she is foolish enough not to fasten her seat-belt before using her car to break down a hospital’s glass door.