The cosy age of This Life is gone

It’s the highlight of the BBC’s new-year schedule. The station’s press officers report that they’ve never had as many inquiries about a single programme. Dozens of newspaper features have hailed the return of what they call, in suitably deathless prose, ‘‘the show that defined a decade’’.

Sadly, although I have set the DVD player and cleared my schedule for January 2, I already know that the reunion episode of the once groundbreaking drama ...