Joe Cole is a year older than Michael Caine was when The Ipcress File came out in 1965 – 33 to Caine’s 32 – yet looks as if he’s just out of short trousers. This is the hurdle one has to get over when watching Cole’s Harry Palmer in the ITV version. He does at least suit a black polo neck which, as Matt Hancock recently demonstrated, is a fashion item that few men can wear well.

But the look of the show as a whole is beautiful, from the stylised opening titles to the shots of London streets. Whoever did the production design deserves a Bafta. The costumes are fabulous too, even if Lucy Boynton’s choice of skirt suit and coat was a little impractical for bursting through a door with a machine gun. Luckily, it didn’t come to that.

Plot-wise, the drama is motoring along nicely, as the search continues for a missing British scientist. The script crackles. “Do you always bring a gun to a funeral?” Palmer asked a Russian operative. “Don’t you?” came the deadpan reply. And from the wife of the missing man, when told that this must be “a very difficult time” for her: “Darling, do I look to you like a grieving widow? Then perhaps you can skip the sentimental drivel.”

We get the gorgeous clothes and cars of the Sixties, but the writers have also turned their attention to the constraints of the time: a man blackmailed for being gay, a woman attempting an abortion with a coathanger. Boynton’s character, Jean Courtney, is dying to extricate herself from a suffocating relationship with her fiancé. Boynton continues to act the role with all the animation of a corpse, but hopefully she’ll warm up a bit as the series progresses. She did crack a smile when Palmer whipped up eggs Benedict.

I’m glad the show has stuck to Len Deighton’s original creation and not tried to turn Palmer into an action hero. The scrap on the night bus was pleasingly realistic. But the one thing that I’m finding difficult is the camera work. Everything is askew. Why have they filmed it as if we’re on the deck of a listing ship?