It's certainly true that I was brought up in that British amateur tradition, the one which always held that if you were reasonably good at cricket, knew one or two Latin texts and a few zingy Oscar Wilde quotes for dinner parties, you were pretty much ready to go and run some outpost in Hindustan.

With its high production costs the show was cancelled by NBC to clear its time slot for the much less expensive daily program The Jay Leno Show. Only half of the first season's shows were produced. Lewis himself is a devoted Liverpool F.

He stars as Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody in the Showtime series Homeland a performance which has earned him an Emmy and Golden Globe. His roles include Soames Forsyte in the ITV remake of The Forsyte Saga Detective Charlie Crews in the NBC drama Life and Major Richard Winters in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers.