The first of the dramas, Friends and Crocodiles, had been broadcast the previous month, with the character of Sneath (Robert Lindsay) appearing in both and acting as the narrator of Gideon's Daughter.

Exploring themes of love, loss, parenthood, and the cult of celebrity, Gideon's Daughter is set against the backdrop of New Labour's rise to power, the death of Princess Diana, and the ill-advised development of the Millennium Dome.

Sneath's friend Gideon is a hotshot publicist and a widower, driven to the edge of a nervous breakdown by his daughter Natasha's emotional detachment from him.

Afraid of sleep, and desperate to escape her sense of bereavement, she works the night shift in a supermarket where she raises guinea pigs in the back.

However, Sneath caught a glimpse of Natasha on the streets of London many months later and she looked radiant, which he took as a sign that Gideon had mended his relationship with her and had stayed with Stella.