We’ve gotten so used to knowing everything about the television we watch, either because they’re adaptations of bestselling books (Game of Thrones and The Handmaid’s Tale, we’re looking at you) or historical events (The Crown, we do love you, but we know that Elizabeth and Philip aren’t going to get divorced, don’t we?), or because they’ve aired first in America before premiering here. We’ve read the think pieces and the hot takes. We’ve sought out the spoilers.

Not so with Bodyguard. This show harks back to how we used to consume our television, together, as soon as it aired because we had spent the intervening seven days desperately waiting for the next episode. Shows like Lost, 24, Desperate Housewives and Breaking Bad.

This is television as an event: A nation sitting down at the same time – or mostly at the same time, disregarding the three or so million who watched Bodyguard on iPlayer over the Bank Holiday weekend – to watch the same episode, the same twists and turns, see the same shock reveals and yell the same maddening questions at our television screens in unison before going to work on a Monday, coffee in hand, and turning to your colleague next to you to demand: “Did you see last night’s episode of Bodyguard?”

Well, did you? And what did you think?

Bodyguard is on BBC iPlayer and continues this Sunday at 9pm on BBC One.

Bodyguard is a reminder of the agony and ecstasy of waiting