The competition must be pretty stiff for “World’s worst airport to be caught with drugs in your baggage”: Bogota? Miami? Singapore? Ciudad de la Paz? Gatwick? But Moscow would surely have to be a strong contender.

I’ve been detained there myself, only for an hour. But you’re never told why you’re being kept waiting, how much longer it will be, or whether this is routine or serious. The young men and women in those oversized peaked hats are perfectly civil but apart from the impenetrable language barrier you’re dealing with several centuries’ worth of culturally-inbred opacity and bureaucracy. And the prisons don’t bear thinking about.

This was all captured most evocatively in the opening scenes of Unconditional, an Israeli thriller about 23-year-old Gali (Talia Lynne Ronn), arrested for drug possession during a layover in Moscow. During the next eight episodes her mother and traveling companion Orna (Liraz Chamami) will be driven to increasingly desperate measures to save her girl, who may or may not be innocent.

If you want to watch quality TV, you often have to endure stressful TV

If you want to watch quality TV, you often have to endure stressful TV

The two episodes I’ve seen so far ring very true. For example, there’s the........

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