Episode 3

Lindsay Denton is denied bail, and prison turns out to be the least safe place she could be. She is targeted inside, and the threat is real enough to leave her shaken. Growing desperate, she confides in Kate, telling her about a relationship with an executive police officer and laying out her theory of why she is being framed. It is a gamble, and Denton is running out of moves. The message is plain: nobody is coming to help her.

The episode is largely a story told in institutional rooms: courts, cells, interview suites. The legal machinery grinds around Denton, with a judge, a prosecution and a defence all doing their jobs while the police hierarchy watches. Dryden's name sits at the centre of the story she tells, and Hargreaves is never far from the action. The effect is claustrophobic in the way the series does best. Every room she passes through has a camera or a guard, and every face is a potential threat. But the walls close in, and the viewer is inside them with her.

Jed Mercurio wrote it, Douglas Mackinnon directed. Keeley Hawes carries the episode with the kind of performance that makes you forget she is acting. Mark Bonnar's Dryden and Tony Pitts's Hargreaves loom over the proceedings, with Matt Faris's clerk, Niall Cusack's judge, Fo Cullen's prosecution, Tara Flynn's defence, Chetna Pandya's New Jo, Richard Doubleday's reporter and Richard Huw's Nick Ronson filling out the rooms. It is a courtroom drama without the courtroom glamour, which suits the show.

There is a particular misery to prison stories where the system itself is the problem, and this episode leans into it. Denton's account of the affair and the framing may be true, or may be a story she has told herself. But the show keeps the door open, which is the right call. The episode understands that the waiting is part of the punishment. The truth here is going to cost somebody, and it is not going to be cheap.