The Great Fire

Call it the original, fiery Great British Bake Off. It began with only the slightest spark in a bakery in Pudding Lane, but out of that grew the conflagration that consumed half of the City of London in just a few days.

Along with 1066 and 1945, 1666 and its Great Fire is one of those landmarks in history at the very core of the nation’s identity. Now the tumultuous events are the backdrop for four-part drama The Great Fire (ITV, Thursday, 9pm). That bright chap Tom Bradby – who somehow manages to pen immensely readable novels in between being ITN’s political editor – has written the script.

The story pivots around baker Thomas Farriner, whose premises on Pudding Lane are where the fire started on its trail of destruction; Bradby has ingeniously transformed the man who some blame for the fire into a hero, played by smart, handsome devil Andrew Buchan. Daniel Mays is Samuel Pepys, and there is a genuine dash of elan from Charles Dance in the role of scheming courtier Lord Denton, complete with splendid periwig. The story knits together all classes in a city beset by poverty and corruption, where the teetering state of the public finances is no bar to the energetically unpuritan partying of the restoration king, Charles II.

Before the confl agration you can savour the entrancing period costumes and steamy bedroom shenanigans, but it’s not long before the flames are spreading, and who knows what will emerge from the ashes.

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