Episode 4

Tommy's big day approaches, and the whole valley seems to be holding its breath. Catherine becomes suspicious of the events unfolding around it, and her suspicion hardens into something she can't ignore. James Norton's Tommy is due a milestone that should close his story, and the episode makes you feel how little that matters to the people he's hurt. For them the day isn't an ending. It's a countdown.

Ryan finds a new way to defy Catherine, and Rhys Connah plays the defiance with the sullen accuracy of a teenager who knows exactly what he's doing. Every rebellion is a small war, and Catherine is running out of patience to fight them all. The new faces matter here: Oliver Huntingdon's Ivan Sertic and Jack Bandeira's Matija Jankovic arrive with their own agenda, and Charlie Murphy's Ann, Mark Stanley's Rob Hepworth, Bonnie Stott's Poppy and Bethany Stott's Florence Hepworth keep the community side of things alive. Con O'Neill's Neil Ackroyd and Gaz Curley's Prison Barber fill out the edges.

Most of the hour happens around the edges of the big event: phone calls, meetings, people making arrangements and pretending they aren't. The episode captures that exhausted vigilance perfectly, the days before something everyone dreads. Catherine is not waiting for the day itself. She is waiting for what the day lets happen next, and she is the only one in the valley who seems to be planning for that. The waiting gives the episode its shape, a held breath stretched over sixty minutes, and O'Brien's direction keeps it from sagging.

Sally Wainwright wrote it, Fergus O'Brien directed. It is a taut hour built around waiting, and waiting is hard to make this gripping. The episode manages it.

The big day is coming, and everybody in the valley knows what's at stake. Catherine knows best of all.