After Ortega recovers from her bust-up in the Fight Drome, she begins looking for Kovacs and finds deception and corruption at every step.

If ever there was a punchbag in Netflix’s adaptation of Richard K. Morgan’s future noir detective thriller, it’s poor Detective Ortega. She’s fighting to be recognised in a man’s world for a police department that is corrupt to the core, and most weeks she gets beaten to a pulp, slashed and has her arm so mauled that it needs to be replaced with a bionic prosthetic. And before this episode is over she will fight a legion of naked Dichen Lachman clones, each determined to slice her with glass shards or axe.

Meanwhile, Joe Kinnaman’s Kovacs is coming to terms with his sister’s return and finally works out who killed James Purefoy’s Bancroft. It’s all very Agatha Christie when the investigator pulls all likely suspects together in the drawing room and reveals whodunnit and why. The identity of the killer is feasible, but as is frequently the case in this show, truth is questionable and often a construct. Even Kovacs knows that the person he accuses may or may not have done the deed, though they have certainly done many bad things, and in solving the case Kovacs gains his freedom.

Verdict: As the show prepares for its final two episodes and (hopefully) a satisfactory conclusion, one can only sit back and go with the flow. Every time you think you’ve got it worked out, someone is revealed to be someone else, a clone, or someone in someone else’s body. Hopefully by tying up some of the threads we’re in a good place for the final act. 7/10

Nick Joy