Episode 2

Catherine learns of a betrayal close to home, and it lands harder than any of the season's violence so far. The episode doesn't rush the wound. It lets her sit with it, and Sarah Lancashire does the rest. Betrayal from a stranger is a case. Betrayal from your own house is weather, and this episode is all weather.

The focus shifts to Faisal Bhatti, who comes under increasing pressure from all sides. Amit Shah's Faisal is a man with a lot of plates in the air, and this hour starts knocking them down. His is the kind of quiet, compounding trouble this show prefers to gunfire: favours and secrets piling up with no way to stop the count. The two stories run alongside each other, Catherine's hurt and Faisal's squeeze, and Wainwright trusts the viewer to hold both.

The cast is a roll call of the season's players: Rick Warden's Mike Taylor, Mete Dursun's Gorkem Tekeli, Chord Melodic's Sledge, Rhys Connah's Ryan, Freddy Smith's Cesco, Mark Stanley's Rob Hepworth, Siobhan Finneran's Clare and Con O'Neill's Neil Ackroyd.

Catherine's hurt is the kind that doesn't ask for sympathy, which is typical of her. She takes the betrayal in and files it, and Lancashire lets you see the filing happen in real time. That restraint is the whole performance. Meanwhile Faisal's story runs alongside hers like a second heartbeat, and the two never quite touch, which is exactly why they feel connected. Lives in a small valley always look separate from the outside. They never stay that way for long. Neither story is finished by the hour's end, and both are already costing everyone involved more than they know.

Sally Wainwright wrote it, with Patrick Harkins co-directing. It is an episode about pressure, applied from different directions, and about what people do when the pressure finds the cracks. Catherine's betrayal is personal. Faisal's trouble is professional, but both are heading somewhere dark.