Episode 3

Tommy Lee Royce is not done with Catherine Cawood, and prison has not made him quieter. From his cell he urges Frances Drummond to go further with her campaign to make Catherine's life a misery, and Shirley Henderson's Frances is the kind of menace that works best in the ordinary world, the world of tea and neighbours and small resentments. She is terrifying precisely because nothing about her announces danger.

The episode also asks a strange question. Catherine attended Tommy's mother's funeral, and a therapist wants to understand why. David Crellin plays the therapist, and the sessions give Lancashire room to show Catherine circling her own history without landing on it. The episode doesn't force an answer, which is the honest way to treat a question Catherine herself can't settle. Meanwhile John Wadsworth begins to sweat when a new body is discovered, and the police work edges closer to him.

The funeral is the kind of detail that separates this show from a standard police procedural. Most dramas would use it as a plot point and move on. Wainwright sends Catherine to a therapist over it, because the question of why she went is the point, and the episode is content to let her sit with it. She doesn't come out with an answer she likes. Neither, to be fair, does the therapist.

Sally Wainwright wrote it, Neasa Hardiman directed. Sarah Lancashire is Catherine, Siobhan Finneran is Clare, Karl Haynes plays Spike, Karl Davies is Daniel, with Charlie Murphy's Ann, Rick Warden's Mike Taylor, Shane Zaza's Shafiq, Mete Dursun's Gorkem Tekeli and Chord Melodic's Sledge.

It is a brooding middle episode, heavy with weather and waiting. The cruelty from the prison is slow and patient. The investigation grinds at its own pace. Only John knows how fast the ground under him is disappearing, and he isn't telling anyone.