Scripted by the award-winning Mark Haddon, author of the acclaimed The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time, it was compelling viewing...to a point.

The premise was that the brothers and their parents were to move from London to Matlock so that Ben, the son with Down's, could attend a special school.

The prospect of moving to 'the back of beyond' — as it is described in the BBC's publicity blurb — so enraged the other brother, David, that he could barely say the town's name without first forming an expression of exasperation and disgust.

In fact, a succession of scenes seemed to begin with someone blurting out: "Matlock?!" in a tone normally used for theatrical exclamations such as: "Murdered?!", "In the library?!" or "With a candlestick?!"

So what happened when the family arrived? Well, David got beaten up at school and sobbed hysterically on a children's ride outside a public library which clearly wasn't Matlock's, and whinged to his friends in the Big Smoke that there was "nothing to do here", presumably because we all "have webbed feet and only eat parsnips" to paraphrase another couple of lines.

Although he seemed to come to terms with his sibling and his new home by the end of it, some of the scripting was a bit unnecessary.

I quite understand Mr Haddon was writing lines for a selfish, vengeful teenage character, for whom the world is ending, but I couldn't help feeling we took a bit of a pasting.

Perhaps we could invite Mr Haddon to appear at next year's Matlock Live event, not to apologise necessarily but to help boost its profile and build its reputation.

It's the least he could do to assuage my annoyance anyway.