There aren’t many dramas featuring the rise of the Nazis that could be described as jaunty, but Outrageous is one. Oddly, this seems to be the first ever TV drama about the Mitford sisters – and, faced with the choice between playing it for laughs, going for a big historical soap opera or exploring the increasingly dark politics of the 1930s, the show’s writer Sarah Williams has, perhaps wisely, opted for all three.

At times, admittedly, the clash of tones can be jarring, but generally in a way that feels like an authentic reflection of a story that remains irreducibly weird. The show also strikes a neat balance between acknowledging the Mitfords’ charm and never entirely succumbing to it.

The first episode of two so far began with a voiceover from Nancy introducing us to the family as they sat poshly around a swimming pool in 1931, reading newspaper articles about Diana’s ‘perfect marriage’ to the very rich Bryan Guinness. As girls, Nancy told us, the sisters had been expected to spend their lives breeding the next generation of aristocrats. As young women, they were now about to go ‘entirely off the rails’.

Diana’s own rail departure started when, in one of the programme’s many well-appointed........

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