Star programme of the week was The Qur’an (Channel 4, Monday). Scrupulous, sympathetic and patiently didactic, it did the task for which Channel 4 was conceived: to enlighten through narrative. Its director, Antony Thomas, had nearly 30 years ago made Death of a Princess, a programme based on the beheading of a Saudi princess and her adulterous lover, which, when broadcast by an ITV company in 1980, caused cancelled contracts and threats of retribution from the Saudi rulers and has never been re-broadcast.

The Qur’an showed men and women, many of the latter highly educated, apparently under no pressure from a man, bearing witness to the greater richness of their lives once they had allowed the message of the Koran into their hearts.