Hurt

Hurt removes the series' most obvious villain. George Ferguson, who drove Gina's debts, ran down Anita and was Rose's first suspect for Curly's murder, is found dead, killed in exactly the same way as Curly. The episode's synopsis draws the obvious conclusion: a serial killer is at large again.

For Carol the second death is a reprieve. She was arrested for Curly's murder after panicking and moving his body, but Ferguson died the same way while she was under suspicion, and the police have to let her go. The relief is short-lived. Curly's nephew, Vinnie, confronts her, resentful of her place in his uncle's life. Later in the series his resentment turns to kidnapping, when he takes Carol's daughter Emma, and it is DCI Newall who rescues the girl. Vinnie insists that he did not kill his uncle.

Carol's feelings about Newall shift during these episodes. The detective who once exploited her is now investigating murders that touch her directly, and Kay Mellor lets the relationship become more complicated than either a romance or a simple abuse of power.

Rose's strand is the most affecting. She is in Manchester, searching for the daughter she gave up years before, and she believes she has found her in Sarah, a young cellist. When Rose tells Sarah what she suspects, Sarah is distressed. She explains that she had a foster sister, Hannah, who ran away when she was twelve, after violent attacks on Sarah that included cutting off her hair and stabbing her. Rose learns that Hannah was later placed in a children's home in Sheffield. The search is not over, and the next episode takes it somewhere Rose does not expect.

The strength of the episode is that the personal stories carry as much weight as the murders. Rose's search is about the life she might have had, and it gives Geraldine James a different kind of material from the street-wise authority of the first series.

Laura Kilgallon plays Carol's daughter Emma, whose safety becomes the stake in Carol's conflict with Vinnie.

The weakness is coincidence. The series is building towards a revelation about Rose's daughter that depends on the world being very small, and the murders, with their identical method, follow a pattern that makes the killer easier to guess than the first series' was. Matthew Evans takes over as director here. Justin Chadwick, later a film director, appears as Rabbit.