“Certainly, he’s domineering to a certain extent, but he never thinks that he’s making her unhappy,” Davison adds. “I don’t think he realises that, I genuinely don’t. And so it comes as a terrible shock when she finally finds the nerve or is empowered enough to say, you’ve made my life miserable. And I’m sure this is something that goes on.”

In some respects, Davison’s casting is perfect to add complexity to Henry. Not because he was Britain’s most-loved Saturday evening television character, Doctor Who. But in truth because audiences first met him, back in 1978, as the dimple-cheeked veterinarian-to-be Tristan Farnon in All Creatures Great and Small. That role, more than any other, confirmed Davison as a character actor who played nice guys.

And yet, more recently, in Sally Wainwright’s At Home with the Braithwaites and Caleb Ranson’s Distant Shores, Davison has fine-tuned the art of playing more unlikeable men, like David Braithwaite and Bill Shore, whose marriages are not rock solid, and who ultimately make terrible mistakes. To that messy pile we can add Henry Reynolds.

“The Braithwaites was something that I was just offered, that I didn’t have to audition for, and I couldn’t quite believe they’d offered it to me, especially as it wasn’t the kind of part that I normally played,” Davison says. “But I loved doing it.”

Thankful for the chance to play against type, so to speak, Davison found a chance mid-way through filming to thank the Braithwaites producer – “for giving me the opportunity to play this very unsympathetic character” – and learned a revealing lesson about casting in the process. “The producer replied, thank you so much for making him sympathetic. So I think the reason that I was offered it was because they just thought, we have to have something [more].

“They worry about having a character in the leading part who’s not sympathetic, so they’re looking for someone who can bring some kind of empathy to it,” Davison says. “I don’t know if it was the same thinking with this one, I’m very happy if it was. But it is an interesting thing to do because, as I say, when I first hear [of the part], I think I can’t do this. And then my next instinct is to try and find something I like in the role.”

The power of Life lies in both its ease of understanding and the complexity of its storytelling. David’s relationship with Saira takes an unexpectedly chilling turn in a couple of genuinely unexpected twists. And Belle, who was first introduced in another Mike Bartlett series, Doctor Foster, must grapple with her own avalanche of emotions when her ex-husband Neil Baker (Adam James) resurfaces.

And in the midst of all that, there is something that sparkles on the screen whenever Hannah and Andy share the frame, delivering what might be the show’s solitary cliche story note: a still-unspoken love that must surely ultimately blossom between the two sweet parents-to-be, despite her engagement and his insecurities.

“We’re all prisoners in our own particular story,” Davison says. “I mean, it’s got more drama with a writer telling the story, so everyone’s life is a big drama really, and I think it’s maybe about change and about denial and all those things. I think each of the stories is a different version of that.

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“But I just was fascinated by almost the high drama of each of those individuals, seemingly ordinary people and yet, within that, you had the most extraordinary stories going on.”

Life premieres on BBC First, Thursday, April 1, 8.30pm.