Bea tries to find her friends, and there’s a long challenge for the remaining teams…

Two very strong episodes of Silverpoint this week, very different from each other. We kick off with a change of focus from the last four episodes – meaning we don’t find out what Louis discovered quite yet (the pleasures of delayed gratification), but we do learn what Bea’s been up to in the background. To use a Doctor Who analogy, Julie Dixon and Lee Walter’s script is a bit like following Billie Piper’s Rose’s journey offscreen in series 4 (where we just got little hints of her), and incoming director Louise Ní Fhiannachta walks the tightrope of giving us something very familiar, yet different.

We’re back in the “real” world where people don’t just disappear and then turn up completely amnesiac – although at least one of them has secrets that she’s been hiding from all of her teammates. There’s a definite detective puzzle/race against time element to the episode, as Bea tries to find the truth, and it’s great to see familiar faces from season 1 reappear – one of the show’s strengths has been that it always has felt that the characters have lives going on that we’re just dipping into, and that’s really the case here. Watch this one carefully – it’s by no means a sidestep, but setting a lot up.

We return to the three competing teams in episode 6, which is the best instalment so far of the season. Lee Walters’ story is told in a non-linear way (countdown to someone reordering the scenes into chronological order, in the way that you can find Memento told forwards), and each bit of backstory that’s revealed adds to the picture – not purely in terms of the plotline, but also the characterisation. The teams are stuck on a beach alternate for a long time, which means that inevitably friction increases, as well as alliances formed and broken. There’s strong performances from all the cast, and director Amy Coop does an admirable job in ensuring that the emotional throughline of the teenagers’ journeys is realistic.

Verdict: Silverpoint is maintaining a consistent standard across the board where many “adult” dramas in the genre have not – if you’re not watching this because it’s “CBBC” and “for kids”, you’re missing out. 10/10

Paul Simpson

Silverpoint series 2 is available now on iPlayer, with episodes airing on CBBC on Wednesday and Thursday evenings.