Inspiration is an interesting business. The interplay of fact with imagination can lead a writer in all kinds of directions. My appreciation of science isn’t hampered by my failure to understand it: semi-digested nuggets from New Scientist have given me some fine ideas. Other writers take inspiration from history, as with Frank Cottrell Boyce’s discovery that the National Gallery’s pictures were stored in a Welsh mine during World War Two. Quite how long he’s known that I couldn’t tell you, but it’s led to a book, and now his own adaptation of that book in the form of a BBC1 drama, Framed.

Trevor Eve plays the custodian of the nation’s art, who when a leak threatens the pictures is obliged to transport the pictures to Wales once again, as his predecessors did to save them from the Blitz. What follows is a family-friendly delight, the pictures transforming a small community, and that community in turn leading to changes in crusty Trevor’s take on life.

It’s all done with a delicate touch. The things Eve takes for granted in London aren’t nearly as straightforward in remote North Wales. He asks for The Times at the newsagent, and is asked whether that’d be the Country Times or the Caernarthan Times. Coffee comes in jars, not cappuccinno cups. And small boys who talk knowledgeably of Donatello and Raphael and Leonardo are discussing their favourite Ninja Turtles, not Renaissance artists.

There’s a danger of it all being rather mawkish, but the writing and performances have a wit to them that transcends cheap sentiment. Besides, look at Trevor Eve and you inevitably think of autopsies, thanks to several seasons of Waking the Dead.

Eve tries to keep the presence of the paintings a secret, but that’s just not possible in a small community. And this is a story about a man’s heart opening up, which it does to the local schoolteacher, a woman who chose to stay in her home town and make things better rather than move away. Their gradual romance culminates in a lovely scene where Eve romances her in a cavern lined with some of his favourite classical paintings. Sweet stuff.

It’s not just Trev who’s transformed. The local butcher comes out of a long depression thanks to the presence of art, and the family who run the local garage are all touched by it in various ways. They’re the engine that drives the plot, dad having done a runner to try and find some money to sort their problems out, the rest showing creative and entrepreneurial flair in relieving the National Gallery man of his money while being inspired by his art to think about their own lives differently.

Lovely as it all is, there was unfortunately a problem with Framed. And that was the writer’s desire to tie up every conceivable loose end. So not only do we see the garage family’s dad return, but he comes back with a toy zebra for his young son — an allusion to some advice he gave him earlier. There’s all sorts of shenanigans involving kids replacing one of the National Gallery’s pictures with one they’ve come across. And that in turn transpires to have been pinched from the National Gallery archives when the pictures were first brought to Wales in World War Two. Eve and the lovely teacher not only hook up, but we see her pregnant in the last scene. Enough already! It’s a rush of exposition which is frankly unnecessary — the resolution could have been handled with a sketch, and not this detail-heavy denouement.

That complaint aside, Framed was a lively and warm drama that I’d like to see more of on television. Programme makers are generally more comfortable with post-watershed material than what happens before nine, and this was a lovely example of how to keep a family entertained with material of quality and intelligence. More like this please.