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This is a fine series and presented with great balance and originality. It is wisely kept to six episodes when so many other series are overambitiously stretched to eight. It is well acted and makes good use of the atmosphere and the remaining installations of the Seville World's Fair, something that other film makers might want to think about doing too. The balance and interaction of the characters is unusually supple, low-key and realistic, not something one would normally expect to see in, say, a U. S. film, for instance. Yet, it steers well clear of the soap-operatic, TV-style shallowness and caricature we are often shown on Spanish TV.

We know from Wikipedia that the boat-sinking and onshore fire at the beginning are real events that actually did beset the opening of the Seville 1992 Expo, but nowhere in the film are we given a clue as to whether the rest of the plot is true or not.

We should be told somewhere exactly which elements are ''documentary'' and which are not. Has the intricate plot beneath the surface got any connection with probable leads in the original real-life investigation, just a few of them, or none at all?

For that matter, what exactly DO we know about the real events? How much of this historical fiction is drawn from reality, and how much isn't?

Surely more is known of the actual events after thirty-three years, or is it still shrouded in mystery by the apparently sluggish and politically dominated Spanish police?

How much of this historical fiction is drawn from reality and how much isn't?

No need for a spoiler-alert here until the ORIGINAL mystery is finally solved some time in the future.

Is this part of the disquieting trend--apparently popularized by The Tudors--of using historical elements to ''legitimize'' a wholly invented fiction to stand in for any worthwhile attempt at history?

Nigel Spencer: A very un-American treat...till now. Anyone who likes Charlie Muffin will love this.

So far, the series is incredibly good and remarkably true to the novels, even to the point of being filmed in the "actual" locale discovered by author Mick Herron, one of the few masters of this genre not really having lived as a spy himself (well probably, possibly). Jackson Lamb is delicious and represents a side of us all we would probably love to act out and even nurture.

OK, I would, in any case.

Gary Oldman is obviously enjoying himself hugely as the man we all hate to love. There are two basic mistakes here though: first, Roddy Ho is more of a nasty egomaniac and less of a goofy closet superhero (totally out of touch with reality) than he is in the books; secondly, the wonderfully explosively psychotic and sugar-bingeing Shirley Dander from the books is nowhere to be found in the lightweight underwhelming version of her character we are presented with onscreen.

Archetypes anyone?

They are part of the deep, unspoken power of these novels.

Lady Die (Taverner) is the flip-side of the original Lady Di. The former is calculating, cold-blooded and unscrupulous, where the latter was spontaneous, sensitive and vulnerable.

Lamb, on the other hand, is a part of ourselves we are longing to let loose on the world: apparently chaotic, blind, unthinking and invulnerable, yet oh so shrewd. He's our Dyonisian side, as is Shirley (only as she appears in the books though). The original Shirley is so far off the rails, she wouldn't know them if she tripped over them and upchucked the cocaine and sugar she's been bingeing on. Unfortunately her side of the triangle has basically been trashed by writer Will Smith. Mick Herron knew what he was doing when he created her for the books though.

One word of caution: the final episode of Season Three also gets very violent, American-style, and we can only hope this does not bode ill for Season Four. Unfortunately, feedback from audiences who haven't read the novels and are addicted to computer-assisted superviolence in their movies may pressure the team into delivering a more violent and sensationalist version such as we are accustomed to in American films. Let's hope not.

Does anyone remember what robots, computers and Americans did to Pennyworth?

We have recently been on the receiving (and deceiving) end of at least two potentially brilliant historical dramatic series that have gone badly wrong. The first and worst is George & Mary, a falsification which turns the reign of James I into a sperm-and faeces-drenched eight-day-a-week sodomy fest. How on earth could The Guardian praise it so highly? Apparently nothing else happened after Elizabeth I died; how could it? Yet so much did. This neglected period holds so much else of interest that is rigorously withheld from us by Julianne Moore's vanity piece, for what else can one call it? For reasons best known to her forensic psychoanalyst, Julianne Moore has indulged and glorified her personal demons for no good reason, and in so doing has twisted history hard enough to break its neck.

The second series to do double injustice to a much-neglected period (the transition through Henry VII to the reign of Henry VIII) is The Spanish Princess. This one, at least, is entertaining and frustratingly well acted. Why frustratingly, simply because it is not true. Harry (the young Henry VIII) was NOT in love with Catherine...he was practically an infant! Henry VII never planned to marry Catherine upon Arthur's death, etc., etc.

Why have these little-lit corners of history been so badly victimised...along with the viewing public?