Tuesday's best TV: A promising family affair for Hannah and her sisters in the messy business of divorce

Serial splitters, spurned wives hell-bent on revenge and landmark billion- pound settlements — when Abi Morgan decided to write a drama inspired by the messy personal lives of the ultra-wealthy, she had a rich seam of material to choose from. London is the divorce capital of the world, and for Morgan the shockwaves caused by those relationships in freefall have proved gripping fodder for drama.

Morgan introduces us to the world of divorce lawyers through a day in the life of Hannah. At home, she’s an annoying mum, despairing at how short her teenage daughter’s skirt is and competing with the iPad for her son’s attention.

But when she finally finds a clean outfit and makes it out of the door, she is a high-achieving partner in a law firm, who charges clients by the minute. Nicola Walker, who for many will still be Ruth from Spooks, plays her; with a gleaming blonde bob and a permanently concerned face — not only precariously trying to balance her home and work lives but also shouldering the emotional baggage of her clients.

There’s plenty of plot to be getting on with. We start with the man who can only pluck up the courage to tell his wife (Meera Syal) that he wants a divorce once they are in Hannah’s office, in a mid-meeting ambush.

Syal is excellent in a Shakespearean turn as the wronged wife. She is forced to come to terms with the alien world of divorce, asking Hannah, “Do you enjoy this, watching people tear themselves apart?”, but discovering that she has steely depths. Morgan has a knack for dialogue, as we saw in Emmy-award winning BBC drama The Hour and her films Suffragette and The Iron Lady. While satisfyingly dramatic, it’s not overblown. Female lawyers consulted on the show to give it authenticity.

There’s a topical subplot about a comedian who uses material from his marriage breakdown in his set — just like the stand-up who was recently sued by her husband in real life. A choice line from Rex Pope’s set is “anything could come out of my wife’s mouth, for example my best friend’s c***”.

Not all the men in the show are love rats. Stephen Mangan plays Hannah’s seemingly tame husband. He’s also a top lawyer but we see him as a bumbling father, forgetting the children at parties. But, in a plotline verging on the soapy, could the appearance of a handsome ex-boyfriend at Hannah’s office be about to rock their marriage?

Hannah’s mammoth day ends with a surprise 70th birthday party for her mother, a stern matriarch who is more resentful than surprised by the event. Hannah comes from a dynasty of lawyers — she’s just left a job at her mother’s firm because she was overlooked for promotion. Now she works with the rivals, and has to go up against her sister Nina in cases. There’s another sister (did Morgan consider the Woody Allen Hannah and Her Sisters reference?), who is a fun nanny, about to get married to a man the family think is a bit of a sap — cue more ruminating on whether a happy marriage is ever sustainable.

Hannah’s mother brought up three daughters singlehandedly when their father walked out. Still, his presence looms large. Watch this space.

With the glut of American drama on TV at the moment, having a London story makes a welcome change. It’s instantly relatable (and you can spot landmarks as you watch). This first instalment is promising, sowing plenty of seeds of curiosity — hopefully enough to sustain it for six episodes. If Morgan’s previous form is anything to go by, The Split is set to be a show you will schedule nights in to catch up with, debating whether you are more like Hannah or her sisters.

@susannahbutter

Pick of the day

Chicago Fire - Sky Living, 9pm

A change of pace inside Chicago’s Firehouse 51, as the FBI moves in for an undercover mission.

A violent fugitive has murdered a federal agent in St Louis, and the Feds believe he is hiding out with his brother who lives across the street.

“All you need to worry about is sitting tight,” says Special Agent Reardon (Chance Kelly), “and staying out of our way.”

Clearly that’s not going to happen, and there is some resentment at the way the FBI operation is getting in the way of the station’s community work. Things start to unravel a little when Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer) and Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) pay a visit to the apartment block to check on a man whose daughter has choked on a hot dog.

In a normal week Casey and Kelly’s jobs require them to go the extra mile, so when they spot an opportunity to take a look at the apartment where the fugitive is thought to be hiding out, things get messy.

Some have suggested this episode could be a trial run for a spin-off series about the Chicago FBI, and it certainly adds a new dimension to the drama, though the showdown does involve a fire alarm.

Screen time

Flight HS13 - Channel 4, 11pm

The latest offering from Walter Presents is an intriguing mix of genres. This Belgian thriller is a mix of The Affair and Homeland (veering more towards the international intrigue than the emotional spelunking.)

Liv (Katja Schurmann) and Simon (Daniel Boissevain) are a perfect couple. But heartbreak looms when Daniel, a surgeon, boards a flight for a medical conference in Barcelona, and the plane crashes, leaving no survivors. Yet Simon never actually checked in, and airport CCTV shows him embracing an Iranian woman who has a young child.

Liv vows to find out where — and who — her husband really is.

The drama screens weekly on Channel 4, but the whole series is available now on All 4.

The Royal Good Guys - London Live, 8pm

With the appointment of Prince Charles as the next head of the Commonwealth — his PowerPoint presentation in the second interview edging him the job — hopefully he won’t be too busy to continue his charity work, some of which is followed in this documentary. His sons are no slouches, either, promoting the Invictus Games and mental health charities.

The Night Bus - London Live, 10pm

What a show of admirable restraint you have shown in taking a night bus — a wonderful evening of boozing has been tailed with commendable thriftiness, that money saved on a cab ready to be directed towards a life-saving sausage sandwich in the morning. Well done. You are theoretically up.

And then your phone’s gone, meaning you’re definitely down. It was there a minute ago, next to where’s me keys — but where’s me phone? Late-night pilfery is encountered in this ride home aboard the giant taxi that needs regular stops because it tires easily, when a thief pockets a mobile when the owner’s distracted. What follows is an unexpected sight, as another passenger has noticed the theft and doesn’t pretend to be asleep…

Catch Up

Westworld - Sky Atlantic

There’s still time to catch up on the first episode of series two of Westworld before the internet explodes. But hurry. Already there is heated discussion online about how Bernard seems to be slipping in between time zones. Kudos, though, to Wired, for pondering the status of the horses in the artificial intelligence theme park. “What would be the difference between a ‘conscious’ robot horse and a robot merely simulating a horse?” it asks, accidentally launching a thousand philosophy PhDs.

Genius: Picasso - National Geographic

There’s a lot to argue about in this dramatic reconstruction of the artist’s life, starring Antonio Banderas as the 1930s model of the genius painter. If there’s a quibble — and there is — it’s that a programme about such a disruptive, free-thinker should be rendered as the stuff of the traditional biopic. Possibly the film-makers should have asked: “What would Pablo do?”