BBC Two, Wednesday

Uma Thurman is one of the last people you expect to see fronting a BBC programme. But there she was on Wednesday, flashing her big, white, American teeth alongside Jonathan Pryce (Pirates Of The Caribbean) and Paddy Considine (The Bourne Ultimatum) in the star-studded My Zinc Bed. The one-off telefilm was a bit of a gawp-fest for Hollywood-watchers – movie stars! On BBC Two! – but its script was sharp enough to justify the high-end casting.

Directed by Middlemarch’s Anthony Page and adapted by Oscar-nominated writer David Hare from his own 2000 stage play, the 70-minute slow-burner was the first of three single dramas in BBC Two’s new autumn season. The others are this week’s God On Trial starring Anthony Sher and Rupert Graves, and A Number with Tom Wilkinson and Rhys Ifans. The concept is simple, and, judging by the powerful and provocative My Zinc Bed, sound.

The film was a study of three addicts – Considine’s penniless poet, Thurman’s trophy wife and Pryce’s cuckolded businessman – who become embroiled in a strange, stagy love triangle.

Nothing much happened, and the dialogue was aloof and unreal – exposing its theatrical origins – but Hare’s themes touched a rare, raw nerve.

“In my own life, nothing that has happened, nothing that can happen, compares with the strangeness of a single summer,” announced Paul Pedlow (Considine) before flashing back to an encounter with the Machiavellian Victor Quinn (Pryce).

Paul, a journalist and recovering alcoholic, had been sent to interview Victor, an internet millionaire, only for the older man to initiate a game of emotional cat-and-mouse.

Quinn paraded his contempt for Alcoholics Anonymous – which Pedlow credited with saving his life – but the CEO’s wife was more sympathetic.

The beautiful Elsa (Thurman, glowing as ever) shared Paul’s weakness for the bottle and soon enough, the two were drawn together.

Victor, scowling from the sidelines with a crooked smile fixed on his lips, never quite revealed how much he knew or cared – if at all – about his wife’s cheating ways, but Pryce nailed every wordy monologue with the kind of master craftsmanship that doesn’t grace our screens too often.

Thurman and Considine, too, were excellent, though it was hard to believe that Considine’s character would have tolerated his bilious treatment by Victor for quite so long.

My Zinc Bed – the title refers to the mortuary slab upon which we all end up – was self-consciously melodramatic, but original and unpredictable.

Touching on most of the big themes – love, death, desire, restraint – the film won’t have been for everyone, but those willing to invest some time and energy will have been rewarded.