I am a fierce advocate of the ability of television to create, imagine and inspire. This week’s offerings have dutifully provided me with one such moment of revelation: I am almost 100 per cent certain that Sophie Okonedo is an immortal goddess.

While ploughing away in the US (continuing in her Tony Award-winning role as Elizabeth Proctor in the iconic American play, The Crucible), Okonedo is also having a double-moment on the BBC. Not only is she bringing the highest levels of suit game while starring in the legal thriller Undercover, but she is also one of many formidable British actors transporting Shakespeare to the small screen, in the second series of The Hollow Crown.

Okonedo is sharp: all acute angle cheekbones, potent stares and crisp pronunciation. Given her ability to make all that she says sound like carefully-considered prose, it is no surprise that in The Hollow Crown she stands out with her competent handling of the Shakespearean script. In her opening appearance as Margaret of Anjou, future wife of young Henry VI, her keenness is fully illuminated. Brandishing a blade that glints in the candlelight in order to protect herself from the English siege, her glittering eyes and tense frame are an image of feline caution as she flirtatiously navigates an altercation with Ben Miles’ well-matched Somerset.

Margaret of Anjou is not exactly a likeable character, and Okonedo does not try to make her so. But whether blushing and giggling as a girlish noblewoman, or testing her weak husband Henry in court, everything she does is underpinned by a perceptive intelligence, channeled through her indomitable gaze. Okonedo’s versatile performance in the first episode unravels Margaret’s seemingly incomprehensible transition from medieval princess to army leader in a script which, for televising purposes, has been dramatically cut down. Moreover, she turns a female character in a historical play (whose inclusion so often feels like something of an afterthought) into a three-dimensional real woman. If Shakespeare had known the term ‘resting bitch face’, he surely would have included it in his stage directions after seeing Okonedo take on Margaret.

It is her natural affinity for language that makes Okonedo even more compelling in the role of Maya Cobbina, a lawyer who has spent 20 years pursuing justice for murdered anti-racism activist Michael Antwi in Undercover. Okonedo has been credited for helping the writer, Peter Moffat, shape his clever script, which she in turn handles with ease. When Cobbina, with seething assiduity, tells the panel interviewing her for the role of Director of Public Prosecutions that she puts all her energy into saying exactly what she means, Okonedo is convincing for reasons that feel like more than just exceptional acting talent. Her restrained eloquence is palpable in interviews and acceptance speeches and, although she can turn on a grittier London accent when a role demands it (Okonedo grew up on Wembley’s Chalkhill estate), her 'regular' voice has the sort of soft, clipped 'BBC' intonation that Hiddleston, Laurie, and essentially every white male actor in The Night Manager have managed to base a career off of. Indeed, Undercover is one of the few shows on British television providing black actors with prime-time roles other than those of period-drama maids or cop-show drug dealers. If this is a sign that the BBC is finally prepared to accept diversity, then Okonedo is a worthy figurehead.

Though deprived of the ability to coast through casting in the way many of her fellow 1990s RADA graduates have, the self-described “Jewish Nigerian Brit”’ has thrived on her resistance to being placed into any one box. Despite a constant stream of positive critical reception, Okonedo’s 25 year career is finally reaching the height it deserves. She is currently commanding lead roles in theatre productions and television shows both here and across the pond; her ease in multiple formats and astute pick of versatile roles lends comparison to better-known British actors, such as her Hollow Crown co-stars Judi Dench or Benedict Cumberbatch. Although she shares with Cumberbatch a hexasyllabic name, his has been the one which has tended to stick with British audiences. Yet one gets the feeling this is the way that Okonedo, quietly cultivating an impressive reputation whilst steering well clear of press and publicity, likes it. Which is fine by me - as long as Britain recognises her value enough to provide her with the challenging and worthy scripts she deserves, before we lose her to the American stage forever.

Undercover and The Hollow Crown: War of the Roses are both available on BBC iPlayer.