The Street (9pm, BBC1) was flippin' brill. There's undoubtedly a far more elegant way of putting that, but sometimes it's best to let admiration run free.

Last night's episode – the final one in the series – belonged to cash-strapped cabbie Eddie, a "big soft lump with a heart of gold who'll do anything for anybody", in the half-despairing words of his wife Margie.

It was a simple, powerful story, with a sparse script, perfectly played by a fine cast, including Timothy Spall and Bob Hoskins.

The tale began with a row. Margie was leaving home to look after her poisonous old dad, who'd had a stroke. Without her, Eddie (Spall) was more or less helpless.

Enter Sandra (Ruth Jones), the plain Jane new girl in the control hut at Alpha Zero Cabs.

She was lonely, but canny, and quickly spotted the significance of Eddie's inexpertly-made doorstep sarnies. Soon she was making Eddie's lunch for him each day.

One thing led to another, and from the moment Eddie went round to fix a broken window in her flat, the tale surrendered to an awful gravitational force.

Eddie slept with her, then rushed home at dawn, all sweaty and dishevelled, to find Margie unexpectedly returned, and the police taking a missing person statement.

"I only did it because I didn't have the heart not to," Eddie confessed to Margie later that night in painful exchange in a curry house.

Reeling from her husband's infidelity, Margie fled to the loo, where she suffered an asthma attack, and died.

This artless retreading of the bare bones of the drama doesn't begin to do it justice.

The beauty of The Street lies not in its plot, but in its dialogue and characters, which are never less than utterly believable. It wasn't entirely flawless. One or two moments didn't ring entirely true. Actually, it was just one.

Would Margie really stay up all night fretting about Eddie, and then wait all day to hear his explanation? No, of course not.

But it would be churlish to dwell on the point.

The Street is a labour of love and this was telly at its very best.

Ace of Cakes (9pm, Good Food) is a reality show filmed in Baltimore.

Unsurprisingly then, there was a shootout last night. Happily, it was with potato guns.

They like to muck about on the premises of bespoke bakers, Charm City Cakes, you see. Which is handy, as there's only so much cake-making action an audience can take.

Mind you, what cakes? Last night they made a speed boat cake cutting through proper-looking waves and one shaped like a meatball with a little bloke on the top, on an edible surfboard.

It's like Pimp My Pudding.