Stephen Poliakoff season on BBC2

I have just finished watching Stephen Poliakoff's TV drama Friends and Crocodiles. It charts the lives of an unlikely bunch of young people who are brought together by Paul (Damien Lewis), an immensely wealthy but careless property tycoon who made his millions in his early twenties. He employs the diligent typist Lizzie (Jodhi May, left) as his secretary, and in so doing initiates a life-long professional relationship that is as warming and touching as it is obsessive and destructive.

One of writer and director Poliakoff's many skills lies in his ability to chart the twists and turns of a disparate group in a rapidly changing period - from 1981 through to the dot com boom and bust of the late nineties. Like many of his dramas - which I am only just discovering in this excellent new season on BBC2 of old and new works - it spins a long, rambling yarn which promises the viewer ever greater revelations if you stick with it.

Whether it delivers on those promises is open to debate, and I expect depends a great deal on the viewe's predisposition for intriguing stories which are more verbal and anecdotal than visual or action-based.

That said, the repeated use of enormous old stately homes and sprawling mansion gardens provides ample space for what is clearly the director's soft spot for the visual splendour of the architecture of old wealth and class, and the history bound up there.

These cinematic shots are the perfect accompaniment to Poliakoff's choice of fresh, uplifting and inspiring compositions. Somehow they manage to simultaneously communicate both wonderful expectations for a spectacular future as well as a deeply nostalgic yearning for days gone by. And seeing as the narrative in Friends and Crocodiles jumps by up to eight years forward at a time, with old friends reuniting after such a long time, Poliakoff keeps piling on the nostalgia in heavy, sagging dollops. It's quite extraordinarily emotional viewing, without ever revealing why or how it is affecting you in the way it is.

I am looking forward to Monday's Capturing Mary, which promises all the beguiling miscomfort of its half-sister/semi-prequel Joe's Palace. Not for the impatient viewer, mind.

P.S. Jodhi May is fantastic, how come I've never heard of her before?