Forget soap operas, costume dramas and Netflix box sets.

If you want a gripping storyline to follow, you will currently find it in - of all things - top-level chess.

I have an interest in chess because although I am not much good at it myself, my daughter played it to a high standard, and until Covid-19, I used to help run two annual kids’ tournaments in Swindon, including the Scouts’ championship.

I don’t follow professional international chess, however - or didn’t, until a recent drama over a match involving World Champion Magnus Carlsen, 31, who is widely regarded as the greatest player of all time.

You should check it out because chess can tell us a lot about human nature and where we are going.

Last month, Carlsen’s 53-game unbeaten run came to a surprising end when he was easily beaten by a 19-year-old, Hans Niemann, even though Niemann was playing with the black pieces (a serious disadvantage at that level).

Now, Niemann is a Grandmaster, so winning was not impossible, but it’s still like Swindon Town drawing Manchester City in the FA Cup, having a player sent off in the first half, but still winning 3-0.

Carlsen suggested Niemann had somehow cheated, and this is where the plot gets really good.

Niemann admitted that he had cheated in the past, by using computer analysis - in two online games, when he was aged 12 and 16.

But the biggest internet platform, chess.com, issued a 72-page report (which I read) saying their mathematical analysis showed Niemann had, in fact, probably cheated in more than a hundred online games, including when he was 17.

All the best plots have more twists, so despite the online cheating and lying, nobody has yet found any evidence that Niemann cheated in games where players were face-to-face (called ‘over the board’).

So how on earth did he manage to beat Carlsen?

Now everyone wants to find out if Niemann invented some kind of Derren Brown-style magic in order to win.

Many think he must have been getting instructions from an accomplice, and the favourite rumour is he was receiving signals via a… um… vibrating device.

What all this tells us about human nature is how people sometimes make terrible decisions when ambition overcomes their conscience, and even very clever people sometimes do stupid things to try to go one step higher.

But it also tells me that when cheating happens, we find it fascinating, and as much as I despise cheating, it has me gripped.

Sadly, the affair is another symptom of a shameless dishonesty that seems to have infected the world, led by dishonest politicians, and I can’t see it ending any time soon.

Because, while checking for the latest news on the chess scandal, I noticed a new headline: ‘Irish dancing world hit by cheating allegations’.

When even Riverdance is involved, we are dancing with disaster.