This glorious BBC1 documentary about the Day of the Jackal writer showed how effective sublimely simple programming can be

They don’t make men like Frederick Forsyth any more. This scholarship boy, fed up with being “relentlessly bullied” at school, took secret flying lessons, left to join the RAF and then, fed up with being put behind a desk, found fresh adventures as a foreign correspondent in west Africa, Paris and East Germany. Oh, and he did a bit of work for MI6, as well as writing The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File and The Dogs of War.

They also don’t often make art documentaries like this any more but Ben Anthony’s film, which opened a second series of In My Own Words (BBC1), proved how effective sublimely simple programme making can be: get a good subject and let them talk. That Forsyth died in June, aged 86, made this more powerful and poignant.