Our new favourite …

Boxset

What’s it called?

Summer Of Rockets

What’s it about?

Set in London and the English Home Counties in the summer of 1958, Summer Of Rockets follows the lives of the Russian-Jewish Petrukhin family – notably father Samuel, an inventor who runs a company making high-end hearing aids, eight-year-old son Sasha, and teenage daughter Hannah, an unwilling debutante who’s about to embark on the “coming out season”, three weeks of high society parties during which she’s expected to find a husband. Around them orbit characters such as wealthy Kathleen Shaw, her politician war hero husband Richard, the enigmatic Lord Wallington and a shadowy team of MI5 officers headed by a man known only as Mr Field. The title refers to the series of NASA Explorer rockets launched in 1958 as well as the ever-present threat of nuclear war that haunts Hannah in particular.

Who’s in it?

Keeley Hawes is Kathleen Shaw and Toby Stephens is Samuel Petrukhin. Also in the cast are Timothy Spall (Lord Wallington), Linus Roache (Richard Shaw), Lily Sacofsky (Hannah) and Scottish actor Mark Bonnar (Field). It’s a stellar cast in its own right but what really gives it its edge is its creator, writer and director: Stephen Poliakoff. One of British TV drama’s great outsiders he brings his typically off-kilter world view and regular pre-occupations – history, secrets, families and grand empty buildings – to this intriguing six-parter.

Where can I find it?

It’s available to watch on iPlayer as a boxset.

Fun fact …

The 1958 “season” was the last one: 1400 “debs” were presented to the Queen in March, 1958 and so ended a 200-year-old tradition.

For fans of ...

Idiosyncratic studies of Britishness masquerading as Cold War thrillers.

Keeley Hawes on her latest roleMark Bonnar on growing up in Leith