It’s New Year’s Eve 2027, and as the Lyons family gather to prepare for what the next 12 months will throw at them, Viktor and Danny get engaged and make plans to come home.

I’m going to be very careful here as even the smallest of spoilers might affect your enjoyment of this incredible piece of TV. This is the one that people will surely be talking about at awards time, and emotionally you feel like you’ve been kicked in the stomach.

Russell T Davies does not sugar coat his ‘what if?’ look at the future, a world that is spiralling out of control, but still recognisable to us in 2019. At a personal level, things start escalating when Stephen’s affair is finally confronted by Celeste, and good for Nan (Anne Reid) for sticking up for her. On a national level, a General Election is looming, with voting mandatory, but there’s a horrible feeling that Viv Rook is going to swoop in like the vicious bird that she’s named after.

As always, there’s some neat tech to enjoy, from breath scans on passports to ‘deep fake’ videos that use CGI versions of Rook’s opponents to say scurrilous things. But more than the tech, it’s the family that we have in our sights in this awful, all-too-possible day after tomorrow.

Verdict: The strongest episode yet this season, and with moments that rank as the most powerful of the year. Not wanting to get too carried away with the superlatives, this is some of Davies’ finest work. If only he could somehow write in the Doctor and Rose to hit the reset button on this awful future, but a happy ending feels unlikely. 10/10

Nick Joy