Episode 3

Two hoodies are shot at close range, and everything about the scene says gangland. Luther is not convinced. The case looks obvious, which to him is usually a sign that the obvious is hiding something, and the episode follows him down a path that connects the shooting to a crime nobody would think to link to it. The connection is unconnected, if that makes sense, and that is exactly why it is the real one. Two men dead in a street is a Tuesday in some parts of London, but this one sits wrong with him.

It is a satisfying hour for anyone who likes watching Luther work sideways. The scene of the crime gets its due, but the answers live somewhere else entirely, and the show trusts the audience to follow a detective who is ignoring the room everyone else is staring at.

Neil Cross wrote the script and Farren Blackburn directed, a new pair of hands for the series. The cast around Idris Elba and Warren Brown's Ripley is strong: Dermot Crowley's Schenk and David O'Hara's Stark keep the department honest, while Elliot Cowan's Tom Marwood arrives in the background and quietly starts making himself important. Mark Rowley's Callum, Gemma Lawrence's Maxine, Oliver Stark's Shaun Butler, Ryan Calais Cameron's Steve Meredith and Sienna Guillory's Mary Day all have their parts to play in a story that keeps widening. It is a big cast, and the episode moves through it at speed.

The theme is appearances. Every character in the hour is presenting a version of themselves, and the murders are just the most obvious of the fictions. Luther's gift is refusing to accept any of them at face value.

And that is the episode in a nutshell. The truth was never at the crime scene. It was in the case nobody thought mattered, which is where Luther always looks first.