Tsunami: The Aftermath (BBC2)

As the title suggests, this two-part film dealing with the giant wave that struck South-East Asia on Boxing Day two years ago is more concerned with what happened afterwards than the actual tsunami itself.

This is a project fraught with danger - from accusations that it's too soon to dramatise a terrible event so fresh in the memory, to the fear that it would be no more than one of those silly disaster movies that trivialise a deadly serious occurence.

The wave struck within 15 minutes of the drama's start, combining actual footage of a Thai resort being devastated with film of actors caught in the swirling waters. This left the way open to concentrate on how governments reacted to the crisis as survivors looked desperately for their lost loved ones.

In common with fictional disaster movies, the script - by Abi Morgan, award-winning writer of Sex Traffic - is multi-stranded, cutting back and forth between half-a-dozen stories of survivors and helpers.

Morgan's screenplay is based on extensive research, and certainly has the ring of truth about it.

The chaos, confusion, desperation and blind terror engendered in the wake of such a tragedy are all too realistically conveyed with Tim Roth's journalist acting as the eyes and ears of us onlookers. He's hardly able to comprehend what's unfolding in front of him but determined to bring the truth to a wider international audience.

The film has the advantage of a stellar cast, no doubt attracted by the intelligent and harrowing script. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sophie Okonedo are the couple separated when the tsunami strikes - she's on a diving trip, he's in the hotel - and then reunited in their quest to find their daughter, last seen clinging to a tree as the wave struck.

Gina McKee's mother is trying to get her injured son out of the danger zone. Toni Collette's charity worker hitches a ride to the scene with Hugh Bonneville's British diplomat and offers advice to a government agency clearly out of its depth dealing with events.

The locals are represented too with Samrit Mahcielsen's hotel worker accused of stealing jewellery from the dead, whereas he's only taken his dead grandmother's valuables for safe keeping.

As director Bharat Nalluri has pointed out, no one has criticised documentaries about the tsunami for being too soon and, when a drama is done as well and responsibly as this one, none can say that Tsunami: The Aftermath should have been left until the tragedy was less raw.

My only complaint is that the BBC would have done better to schedule the two-parter on consecutive nights instead of a week apart. A lot of the drama and tension will be lost in the week-long wait.