Episode 5

Pauley Lawless is buried and his uncle wants to know why he died. The episode opens with funeral preparations in slow motion, a horse groomed, suits straightened, an undertaker's hat, while Terence May walks his land in Spain and Nidge sits with his head in his hands, dreading the meeting to come. Moynihan questions Siobhán about the death; she cries and denies involvement, and he warns her that Nidge will have to tell Terence and that she should watch herself. Nidge's solicitor tries to reassure him that Pauley was off his head on drugs, and Nidge calls the girl a tramp. Drunk at Janet's house with Elmo, he leaves an abusive message on Siobhán's phone arranging to have a chinwag at the funeral. Trish berates him for his state.

Patrick is kept to the margins: a shot of him looking at a bracelet while Brandon recovers in hospital, and the preparation of Packy's body for burial. When a man tells him they are burying Packy in the back field, Patrick replies, "Good and deep, Joe." At the funeral home, Nidge meets Terence and is shown Pauley's body; Terence remarks that they would be better off stapling a picture to his head. Terence warns Nidge that if he finds Siobhán had anything to do with Pauley's death she will be given a flying lesson, and asks for her to attend the funeral.

At the funeral, Siobhán follows Terence into a room and lies to him: that she and Pauley were celebrating because he had proposed, that she had pills in her fridge and he took a quantity, that he was lying on the balcony believing he was sunbathing. Terence believes her, kisses her forehead and has tea brought for her. Elmo, who did a solid job with the gnomes, is intercepted by the Gardaí while attempting a deal with a large quantity of drugs and is arrested; he faces a minimum five years. Fran stabs himself repeatedly in the prison shower, screams that he has been attacked, is taken out in an ambulance and, on being brought to a toilet, punches the guard and escapes from the hospital.

Siobhán's friend Donna drives her to Fran's caravan to steal the finger bone. Donna refuses to come in, and Siobhán goes alone. She finds the bone in the fridge, then hears Fran's dogs and hides under the caravan, where she watches Fran beat Dean savagely to death. Fran drives away with the body, leaving Siobhán stranded in the mountains on foot. Nidge finds a Garda number on Janet's phone and accuses her of being the rat; she protests that it is the number of her son's liaison officer. The episode ends with Siobhán abandoned on the road, Fran at large with a body in his van, Elmo in custody and Janet marked.

The funeral-room scene is the hour's strength: Siobhán's capacity to lie her way clear of a man who has just buried his nephew is the best demonstration in the season of what the character has become. Terence is the other distinction, the first person the series has put in a room with its lead who could end him without effort. The weakness is that the episode is a corridor between two bigger hours, and the prison escape and the material around it are the least persuasive writing of the run. No viewing figure and no national newspaper review were found; the blog review judged it less explosive than the last hour but a promising set-up for the finale. It contains the last full flowering of Siobhán as a character and makes her death a consequence rather than a shock.