Personally, I have always thought Benedict Cumberbatch is a remarkable actor. Ever since Hawking, VanGogh, Stuart, ThirdStar... The list just continues and hopefully will for Many years to come!

Times review of Parade’s End tonight
BBC Two, 9.30pm 
It is 1916. “The war has turned decent people into beasts,” remarks Valentine (Adelaide Clemens). It is clear who she is aiming this barb at — her beloved Christopher Tietjens (Benedict Cumberbatch). But she is unaware that Tietjens isn’t off “murdering Germans”, but is lying prone in a casualty clearing station in France having being blown up by a shell. Suffering from short-term memory loss, he is discharged. Sylvia, meanwhile, is busy flirting with the Tietjens family banker Lord Brownlie, who is one of many people spreading malicious gossip about Tietjens, accusing him of all manner of unpleasant things. Sylvia is not buying all the poisonous rumours about her seemingly incorrupt husband, though rumours of an affair with Valentine have more resonance for her. The traumatised Tietjens is soon reunited with Sylvia, and there is a poignant scene between them where he recalls the sounds of the different sorts of shells, with one that has a crack “like wet canvas being shaken by a giant.” Cumberbatch is a truly remarkable actor, and Tom Stoppard’s brilliant scripts give him plenty to work with.

source: cumberbatchweb