Marvellous as they are, the BBC Four season of dramas about comedy greats (Wilfred Brambell and Harry H. Corbett, Tony Hancock, Frankie Howerd, Hughie Green) are receiving a huge amount of hype, with countless trailers on TV and radio. The same with The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. You sometimes feel as if you've seen a show without even watching it.

So it's always fun when a series becomes a genuine “sleeper hit” - somehow forgotten by the channel on which it has a home, bounced helplessly around the schedules, but fiercely loved by viewers who alight upon it. Damages is a cult in the making: a complicated (for this viewer at least) drama about a serpentine legal case involving the shady billionaire Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson, with white bouffant) and a tangled web of insider trading, murder and illicit sex.

With two episodes to go, the thing that keeps you rooted, and open-mouthed, is Glenn Close as Patty Hewes - who is prosecuting Frobisher - the kind of lawyer you might want on your side, but not one you'd ever cross. Close's intense ruthlessness is somehow scarier than her bunny-boiling turn in Fatal Attraction, particularly in her twisting and twisted relationship with young intern Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne).

The brilliance of Damages really lies in its time-shifting structure. We go from present to past (revealing the past of Frobisher's closeted gay lawyer, for example) but, most significantly, present to future - and Ellen covered in blood, her boyfriend bludgeoned to death. Did she kill him? We found out this week why Patty has blood on her shoe. What about Ellen's boyfriend's stalker? It is nail-chewingly unbearable. The good news: unlike Lost, we can expect answers at the end of this first season - as well as, so the whispers go, a brilliant twist that sets us up for season two.

Editor's choice

• U2 at Nou Camp Stadium, Barcelona
• The 50 Best Movie Villains
• The 15 golden rules of theatre etiquette