Episode 4

By this point in the season Luther's life is coming apart in several directions at once, and the episode makes him hold all the pieces. Toby Kent is dead and Luther is trying to cover it up. Baba is suspicious and needs appeasing. Jenny needs protecting from further harm, and the effort of keeping all three plates spinning is visibly costing him.

At work, there is a killer whose actions are ruled by dice. He rolls, and someone dies, and the randomness is the point. You cannot profile a man who does not choose, and the case forces the team to confront the possibility that their usual toolkit means nothing. Luther has built a career on reading people. A man who leaves his choices to a pair of dice is a blind spot with a body count.

Neil Cross wrote it, Sam Miller directed, and the episode leans on the regulars to keep the chaos legible. Idris Elba carries the slow breakdown, Aimee-Ffion Edwards's Jenny is the reason he keeps going, and Dermot Crowley's Martin Schenk, Warren Brown's Ripley and Nikki Amuka-Bird's Erin Gray hold the investigation together around him. Steven Robertson's Millberry twins, Jamie Richards's Richard Gardiner, Michael Smiley's Benny Silver and Alan Williams's Frank Hodge all contribute to a story that is running out of room for new complications. It is a lot of plates, and the episode keeps every one of them visible.

The dice killer gives the hour its shape, but the heart of it is Luther's own collapse. He is a man whose life is being decided by forces he cannot control, which makes him closer to the victims than he would like.

And that, in the end, is the tragedy the episode is pointing at. The man hunting the random killer is living through his own lottery.