Episode 2

Luther is on a date. That is the whole trick of this episode's opening, a rare glimpse of him doing something ordinary with Mary Day, the promise of a romance that might actually survive contact with his job. Then the news comes through that the killer has struck again, and the date is over before the starter arrives. The victim count is climbing fast, and the pattern from the 1980s is repeating with interest. Each new report is another line on a list nobody wants to read.

The episode holds two clocks. There is the killer's, which is accelerating, and there is Luther's own, which has never run on normal time. Mary is patient with him in a way the show has not often allowed its women to be, and Sienna Guillory makes the patience feel earned rather than saintly. Luther keeps being pulled back into the deep end, and the hour is about whether the two can survive each other.

Neil Cross wrote it and Sam Miller directed. The police side is well served: Dermot Crowley's Schenk, David O'Hara's Stark, Nikki Amuka-Bird's Erin Gray and Warren Brown's Ripley all get proper work, with Kevin Fuller's Paul Ellis doing the legwork. Sasha Behar's Dani Lane and Selva Rasalingam's Craig Lane add a case-shaped complication, and Laura Pyper's Jodie keeps the edges busy. The Lane couple's involvement stops the hour from becoming a simple manhunt.

But the episode belongs to the space between Luther and Mary. She is not a plot device, which is rare enough to notice. She is a woman deciding whether she can live with what he is, and the show lets her make that decision in her own time.

The killer gets the final word, of course. Every quiet moment in this series is just a pause between alarms, and the closing scene makes sure you remember that.