I may have made a mistake. I’ve been reading scripts my entire adult life and since bothering to count from Christmas 2017, it’s been 2,289 of them. It’s not as if I’ve ever been unaware or unappreciative of how much producers, directors and cast do, yet very often if I’ve read the script, I don’t bother watching.

But then this week I watched the first episode of Guilt by Neil Forsyth. (It’s on the BBC iPlayer.)

I’d read the scripts as taut and frighteningly tense, and the transmitted version was exactly that – but it was also a lot funnier. It was played funny at points and played very well, barely any of which I got from the scripts. Same words, same meanings, just funnier when handled by a talented cast instead of me.

Similarly, while I was thinking about this, Britbox added Steven Moffat’s Coupling. I watched it and then the American remake too. If I had read the script, I wonder whether I would’ve got how funny it is. The US cast didn’t seem to.

While I’m on this line, I’m minded how in the early 2000s I read Ronald D Moore’s script for the reimagined Battlestar Galactica and shrugged. But I defy anyone to watch that mini-series and not be utterly arrested by it all.

I’m not saying that any one can make a bad script good. I’m saying that there are an enormous number of people who can read scripts better than I can, and a lot of them are currently treading the boards.

I’d best get back to practicing.