Compliments to the chef, Boiling Point is Michelin-starred TV drama

Boiling Point (BBC One) is highly stressful TV. Avoid it if you’re worried about your blood pressure. Never mind a high-speed car chase or trying to defuse a bomb: try making a hollandaise sauce when you’re not sure of the ingredients, while outside a table of customers complains that their starters are taking too long to arrive and the atmosphere in the kitchen is blistering – sometimes quite literally.

You’ll be left with a newfound respect for people who work in them. It’s a ferociously good four-part drama series, a sequel to the 2021 film of the same name starring Stephen Graham as Andy Jones, a head chef on the edge. The film ended with Andy in no fit state to run a restaurant.

Now his former sous-chef, Carly (Vinette Robinson), has struck out with her own just-launched restaurant, Point North. Episode one is set over one frenetic night. The dialogue is quick-fire and takes place over the noise of the kitchen (subtitles may be advisable). Staff are at loggerheads, patrons are obnoxious, and Carly also has financial pressures and a manipulative mother (Cathy Tyson) making demands upon her time. Tempers fray. Orders are piling up, and so are disasters. Mind you, I’m not sure that a “fine dining twist on Northern cuisine” can be a going concern, even in hipster-ish Dalston, and I say that as a proud Northerner.

Into all this comes Johnny (Stephen Odubola), a new chef de partie who has exaggerated his experience, is wildly out of his depth and incurs the ire of gobby Scouser Bolton (Shaun Fagan). Others in the kitchen and front of house are holdovers from the film, including Hannah Walters – Graham’s real-life wife – as Emily, the pastry chef and mother hen whose warmth makes this environment bearable.

Director and executive producer Phil Barantini worked in a kitchen for 12 years, so take it from him that this is realistic. A Telegraph colleague who began his career in one of Marcus Wareing’s restaurants confirms that it is. It’s an exhausting watch, although the second episode does quieten things down (all four are available on iPlayer).

Sometimes we leave the kitchen to dip into the characters’ home lives, although happiness is in short supply: mental illness, anxiety and alcoholism all feature, and the low wages paid to kitchen porters leads two of them into trouble. And don’t expect the nervous tension to let up just because we’re away from the restaurant.

Episode three features a car journey that will have you biting your nails to the skin. Graham appears intermittently, a lonely figure brooding at home in his dressing gown and thinking wistfully of the career he has lost. But it’s a sign of Boiling Point’s quality that it can sideline Britain’s best actor and still prove to be one of the best shows of the year.