What to watch on TV this week: Prey, Hunderby and Tripped

This week travel to the deranged estate of Hunderby (pour yourself some bubbly milk), watch taut boxing drama The Man Inside on London Live, and pull on some trainers to join Philip Glenister on the run in Prey.

Hunderby, Thursday Sky Atlantic 10pm

The deliciousness of a bubbly milk, however bubbly, cannot match that of the script and performances in this subversion of period dramas, set on a country estate in 1831 and home to housekeeper Dorothy, who Norman Bates would admire.

Hunderby is a wolf in a stiff corset, its teeth exquisite blades of language which shred characters’ dignity and rip into Sunday night bonnet dramas, writers Julia Davis and Barunka O’Shaughnessy crafting sentences which glory in lampooning the literature of that time. A delirious and hysterical work of Gothic imagination to rival Wednesday Addams’ diary - I had tears running down both sets of cheeks.

The first of this two part special assembles the scheming of Dorothy, the doomed love affair of Dr Foggerty (Rufus Jones) and Helene (Alexandra Roach), the simpering Hester (Rosie Cavaliero, more on her later), and a violent monkey. A monkey, Rufus Jones tells me, that between takes would wear a smoking jacket and a fez. That’s normal by this show’s standards.

Prey, Wednesday ITV 9pm

More, as promised, on Rosie Cavaliero and her week of contrasts. In Hunderby her simpering Hester has been teleported in from another period piece and is unequipped to fend against the merry cruelty of that screwy parish; as DS Susan Reinhart in this cracking thriller Cavaliero couldn’t be any more self-assured or forceful. High drama to stratospheric farce is bridged with ease.

What Prey recognises is that when you have a story driven by pace - the very footsteps of fugitives prison guard David Murdoch (Philip Glenister) and prisoner Jules Hope (MyAnna Buring) – you tell it quickly and you don’t compromise the characters. And so this three-parter is off like a Russian athlete, the kidnap of Murdoch’s pregnant daughter forcing him to spring Hope during a trip to a hospital, an escape which Reinhart begins to gather isn’t your average jailbreak.

The Man Inside, Thursday London Live 10pm

The Man Inside isn’t the Inside Man, that film where Clive Owen robs a bank and escapes by not escaping, nor is it an abbreviation of The Man in The Iron Mask, which was itself abbreviated to Iron Man.

The Man Inside in this drama is the one within Clayton, a young boxer who is close to mentally knocking himself out, his fears that the violence of his childhood has already shaped his future. And you can’t blame him. His dad Eugene is a sadistic misogynist who purposefully exposed him to his acts, Clayton more likely to come home after a day out with his dad covered in someone else’s blood rather than more innocent grass stains.

David Harewood is a brutal figure as Eugene, whose influence over his son extends from his prison cell, and the decent cast includes Ray Panthaki, Ashley Thomas as Clayton, and the formidable Peter Mullan, who plays Clayton’s boxing trainer. Rocky more describes the relationship they have…