Nigel Farndale on True Love, Simon Schama and the Leveson Inquiry There was something pleasingly spare and tender about the first half-hour episode of True Love (Sunday, BBC One). Unusually, all the characters were sympathetic, all victims, in their way, of that capricious organ, the heart. The story was plausible enough, if not especially original. A happily married man (David Tennant) had his world turned upside down when an old girlfriend (Vicky McClure) returned after a 13-year absence. They both realised they still loved each other, slept together, then did the right thing and went their separate ways again. This was the strongest of the five episodes, shown on consecutive nights through to Wednesday, but the others had their moments and worked best when they dealt with scenes that are recognisable, such as a long married couple having a conversation-free dinner in a restaurant. In that episode Jane Horrocks played a woman whose marriage was unravelling. Though she didn't know it, her husband was having an affair with a character from another of the episodes, played by Billie Piper, who in turn went on to have a lesbian affair with one of her pupils, whose best friend, slightly confusingly, was played by Jo Woodcock, who looks remarkably similar to Billie Piper, and who went on to become a bunny boiler in a later episode. That was the thing; although each episode stood alone, certain characters did have walk-on parts in other episodes, a device familiar from Jimmy McGovern's The Street. This was possible because they were all set in the same unexpectedly beautiful and windswept location, Margate.The series was "written" and directed by Dominic Savage. The written is in inverted commas because the dialogue was improvised around a storyline. In case the actors failed to deliver, the music gave heavy-handed clues as to what was going on - "The first time ever I saw your face," "True colours" and so on. But the cumulative effect was satisfying and raw, if a little melancholy. Shakespeare would have recognised the themes in True Love, because they are timeless. And if I had one minor criticism of Simon Schama's otherwise elegant and thoughtful two-part documentary Simon Schama's Shakespeare (Friday, BBC Two), it was that he didn't give due weight to love as an explanation for the playwright's enduring appeal. He concentrated instead on Shakespeare's political themes, asking how the bard managed to appeal both to the gentry and the "groundlings" in his audience and, in the process, capture a quintessence of Englishness. His answer was partly that Shakespeare was fortunate in his timing, having been born 30 years after the Protestant Reformation began. This was because he had a genius for phrase-making and Protestantism relied on the power of "the word" rather than the "imagery" of the primitive Catholic mystery plays that people were used to. It was also a time when England needed to forge a new identity, a new narrative about itself. The age became obsessed with history and metaphor, as did Shakespeare, not least because he realised it was a safe way to talk about the politically volatile present. Schama showed us how Shakespeare reshaped not only the way we speak but also the way we, the English, think of our ourselves. "You can take away cricket," he said, "you can skip the Last Night of the Proms, you can even lose an empire, but without Shakespeare there would be no England." This is how he talks, an accessible blend of the chatty, the colloquial, the erudite and the evocative. The most compelling drama on our screens at the moment is not a drama at all but The Leveson Inquiry (BBC News 24). It is in the Face to Face tradition of a long, in-depth interview without interruption or interpretation. The forensic Robert Jay QC takes on the John Freeman role, leaning forward, pronouncing his Rs as Ws as he directs witnesses to the relevant bundles and tabs. Hearing mostly intelligent people talking about subjects they care about makes for mesmerising television. It is also interactive because of the way people have been commenting on Twitter. Each week has a different plot: Rebekah Brooks and David Cameron with their country suppers, Blair and his protester. But the star turn so far has been Michael Gove, who exhibited a quite breathtaking command of the English language. What puzzles me is why the spectators in the courtroom never seem to look at the star witness, but instead look straight ahead. Odd that. I keep wanting to shout: "He's over here!"