Icomplained some weeks ago that BBC One’s new three-part adaptation of E.F. Benson’s evergreen comic novel Mapp and Lucia looked to be superfluous, the job having been done so well in the 1980s in an ITV series starring Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales and Nigel Hawthorne. This proved to be the case. Admittedly the production was consistently entertaining and well-acted, even if Miranda Richardson’s Mapp bore more than a passing resemblance to the great Prunella’s, especially in the matter of her vulpine smile. But loyal Benson fans, of whom I am one, were bound to be irritated by a daring departure from the original made by scriptwriter Steve Pemberton (who was excellent in the role of camp Georgie Pillson).

This came in the grafting on to the main story of a sub-plot concerning a fraudulent guru who arrives in the seaside village of Tilling at the behest of resident Diva Plaistow (Felicity Montagu) and goes on to be ‘annexed’ by Lucia.

Now as any true Luciaphil knows, the episode occurs in Queen Lucia, the second in Benson’s five-novel sequence. This is not set in Tilling but in land-locked Riseholme, and the guru is not delivered to Diva (who never goes near the place) but to fad-mad Daisy Quantock, whose sequence of fast-changing health regimes has led on this occasion to yoga.

A venial sin, in comparison, was to have Anna Chancellor’s Lucia owning a Bentley rather than the Rolls-Royce specified by Benson. So, I suppose, was having everyone pronounce the first name of the butch artist ‘Quaint’ Irene Coles with two syllables rather than three. It was still jolly annoying though.