Red Rose is closing in on the group and a final showdown is inevitable.

It’s often the case that the penultimate instalment is where a series really shines. Everything is at stake, the tension is at its highest, and there is no risk of an anticlimactic resolution. The seventh episode of Red Rose largely fulfils this rule. Ashley is in hospital, and it becomes clear that the app is trying to pick the gang off one by one, attacking each of them via their worst personal fears, fuelling their most acute insecurities. This is studied in greatest depth and with the most narrative skill via the character of Anthony, struggling to care for his alcoholic mother and be a guardian to his kid brother Liam. Wren is driven by the need to find her Dad, and there’s a lighter touch to the jeopardy facing Taz and Ash.

A couple of the strands aren’t quite so well drawn. Noah’s through-line is hard to follow. The major plot twists around Jaya’s character clunk like a gear box on its last legs. Questions are asked about the other parents, which go clumsily and frustratingly unresolved. But as ever with Red Rose, any shortcomings are forgiven through the wit of its observations. There’s a superb moment with three drunk Bolton ladies which ought to feel like a cheat, but because it is so completely truthful to the show’s location, it is laugh-out-loud brilliant, especially for anyone who knows the town.

Avoiding spoilers as much as I can, if there’s a disappointment in the show’s conclusion it’s that it veers towards the more familiar riffs we’ve seen in Squid Game and Alice In Borderland. To be fair, the Clarkson Twins do this very well, but I always find deus ex machina explanations less satisfying than those driven purely by the internal dynamics which a series like Red Rose has done so well to establish. The script does its best to hold on to those emotional truths, but by creating external antagonists, and relying on a left-field backstory, it does turn things a bit Scooby Do. This is a shame. It dissipates some of the energy that has driven the series so wonderfully up to this point, and I found myself missing the more supernatural implications of the story.

Verdict: On the plus side, it sets us up nicely for a second series, and reservations aside, this is an extremely good piece of work that absolutely deserves another outing. While the finale itself might only warrant a respectable 7/10, for the sheer pleasure of watching all eight episodes of Red Rose the show deserves an unequivocal 8/10

Martin Jameson