There’s a school of thought that says much of what we get up to has its roots in different stages of humanity as a species. Rewind way back and you’ve got two currents. One is all about individual expression and winning through. Your fundamental instinct to survive and make your mark, manifested in everything from a caveman wrestling a sabretooth tiger to Tiger Woods scoring a hole in one more beautiful woman. Alongside this, the need for the tribe to prosper as a group, which calls for individual welfare to be subordinated to the collective, be that a genteel family in a Victorian novel or a Los Angeles street gang.

A lot of drama has its roots in this individual v tribe dynamic. It’s there in Romeo & Juliet, where the hero falls in love with a woman from the wrong side of the tracks, and it runs through a whole bunch of manly films. Gangster films often focus on the pull between a hotheaded youngster wanting to make a name for himself and the loyalty that’s necessary to progress in a crime family. Kill by all means — but only kill the people your superiors tell you too.

One contemporary take on such a theme was presented in the superb ITV drama Father & Son, the first part of which ran this evening. ‘Torn from the headlines’ is the expression some papers use for drama like this, inspired by real life gangland shootings in Manchester. Writer Frank Deasy has done wonders with that exceptionally raw material, translating it into a gripping, moving, and powerful tragedy about families and violence.

Teenager Sean O’Connor is the son of a killer, and in taking a gun from his girlfriend’s hand and holding it himself, seems to have inherited the title himself. Claimed almost as a trophy by an old ally of his dad’s in prison, Sean is under the older man’s wing — but that isn’t to say he’s safe. The ally wants out of prison, and realises Sean is a valuable piece on a chess board that also includes teenage gang members, the aunt who’s brought Sean up and works for the police, and fellow cops who view Sean as nothing more than the latest in the line of murderous O’Connors.

There are strands of tension accreting throughout the story. Sean wants to do right by his aunt, a positive role model, and steer clear of his dad. He loves his girlfriend, and goes to prison rather than allow her to face a murder charge. His cellmate professes allegiance to Sean’s dad — but will sacrifice Sean to get what he wants. And the murder happened in the first place in self defence as response to a friend of Sean’s being shot by gang members.

It’s potent and beautifully played stuff, and though the future looks bleak for Sean O’Connor, there are three episodes to come, and in them the certainty of further twists on the theme of individual will and its relation to collective experience.

These dynamics are at the heart of many a martial arts film. David Mamet’s Redbelt is about a martial arts tutor loyal to his lineage who ends up caught in a fixed tv tournament and fighting against its corruption, in the process winning the heartfelt thanks of his school’s grand master. Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai are honorable warriors prepared to sacrifice themselves on behalf of a defenceless farming community. And so on.

You can find variations on the theme in westerns, and in any film where a new recruit is initiated into a service and needs some of their maverick qualities sanding down — though inevitably it’s the utilisation of same that saves the day and for which the initiate is rewarded by the elders of the tribe. All of which is to suggest that this is a theme as old as civilisation itself — and Father & Son an excellent example of a modern take on it with more of a socially relevant than a mythic interpretation of it.