Episode 2

A tip-off gives Catherine Cawood her best lead on Tommy Lee Royce, and she goes after him as if the whole case depends on it, because in her head it does. She spots him, gets close to the kidnapping plot without quite cracking it, and the episode is the stronger for the near miss. Tommy stays a step ahead, and Catherine has to swallow that. The hunt is the engine of the hour, but it never quite delivers, which is exactly the show's way of keeping the rope taut.

Kevin Weatherill is coming apart in the other corner. Watching Nevison Gallagher's despair finally breaks something in him, and he confesses everything to his wife Jenny. Jenny is shocked and tells him to stop taking money from Ashley Cowgill. Kevin agrees in principle and then does nothing of the sort, because the family is desperate and money is money. It is a quiet, grubby compromise, and the show knows exactly what it looks like. There is no glamour in Kevin's slide, no slow-motion fall. He just keeps making the same small choice, and each one costs him a little more.

Catherine's own distress is quieter. Her ex-husband Richard still refuses to accept Ryan, and she carries that refusal around on top of everything else. Nobody in the episode gets to put their trouble down for an hour.

Sally Wainwright wrote it, Euros Lyn directed. Sarah Lancashire is back as Catherine, with Steve Pemberton's crumbling Kevin, George Costigan's Nevison, Siobhan Finneran's Clare, Sophie Rundle as Kirsten, Hannah John-Kamen as Justine, Ishia Bennison as Joyce Metcalfe, Shane Zaza as Shafiq Shah and Adam Long as Lewis Whippey. James Norton's Tommy looms over the lot of them, and the episode is better for keeping him mostly out of reach.

This is a middle-chapter episode, mostly connective tissue, but the tissue is doing real work. Everybody here is being pulled tight, and Wainwright gives the whole mess a good yank.