It’s our personal belief that one of the main reasons he gets so much work is an unbridled joyful sense of delight and glee. That’s certainly something that’s brimming to the (moon’s) surface in this fun and exciting drama.

In fact, it’s a little surprising that this is tucked away in mid-October on BBC Four, rather than getting a decent billing somewhere in the Christmas schedule. This feels very much like the sort of old-fashioned family entertainment we’re always told was playing continually in the ‘70s – low tech but gorgeous looking, the perky Brits expanding the Empire into the stars using a spaceship that can be fixed of almost any fault by simply slamming a fist on it and is ‘large enough to carry two people… and their luggage’.

Mark Gatiss (who also stars) and Rory Kinnear make a great double act – the former, as Cavor, being the very best of a British Professor Branestawm type character , only interested in knowledge and fact. Meanwhile Kinnear, as Julian Bedford, is full of bluster and a ‘punch first’ attitude, at times recalling his own father, particularly in the scene where he whoops in excitement at the sight of an apple doing an ‘anti-Newton’, and floating up, rather than falling down.

This is classic sci-fi, all insane logic, but fiercely logical al the same – our two boys might travel to the moon in what’s essentially a wood-panelled drawing room, but even though the science fact is outdated, we stay within HG Wells’ principles of sticking to the rules that have been set up, even if those rules only occur to the characters after it’s too late – the questions ‘is there air up there?’ and ‘can we get back?’ are both responded to with the less than comforting ‘probably’.

There’s a childlike wonder and inspired (sorry) lunacy running through the entire length of this quite lovely drama, and while ‘quite lovely’ might sound like damming praise, this is a genuine – we can’t say this enough – delight. Honestly, this is the warmest side of the moon.

Airs at 9pm on Tuesday 19th October 2010 on BBC Four.