After Episode 4’s sole focus on Laura’s journey, she meets up with Shadow and has to address the bison in the room, namely that she was killed while pleasuring his best friend in a moving car.

One of the continuing pleasures of this show is its unwillingness to play to convention. What could have been a heartwarming reunion is immediately revealed to be a flashpoint; he’s not ready to forgive her for the infidelity and she’s not actually that sorry for what she did. There’s a lovely symmetry here between Ned and Chuck in Bryan Fuller’s Pushing Daisies where the two leads could never touch and here where Laura submerses herself in a warm bath so that she’s not cold to the touch when he kisses her.

Just when things reach a head, the doors burst open and Shadow and Mr Wednesday are arrested following a detailed tip-off about their bank robbery scam. A big enemy wants to get them to the police station for a parlay, but who is it, and what’s their intentions?

Laura has some great scenes with Mad Sweeney, who is still desperate to get back his lucky gold coin from Laura’s belly. Not surprisingly, she won’t be giving this up easily in light of the super powers it has bestowed upon her. It’s great fun watching the slight Emily Browning pinging Pablo Schreiber around a motel room with the faintest flick of her fingers.

Ian McShane continues to excel as the enigmatic huckster Mr Wednesday, trying any and every form of duplicity to get his way. Gillian Anderson and Bruce Langley return respectively as Media and Technology Boy, though I won’t spoil the guises that the former appears in. And then we meet the big bad. Book readers know who it is, but for everyone else you can look forward to a suitably deranged and terrifying turn.

And let’s not forget a wonderful ‘Coming to America’ prologue which features some bloodthirsty stop-motion animation.

Verdict: We’re at the midway point of the first season and all the key players are now in place on the board. With a strong clutch of main characters and supporting villains, this show continues to sparkle with inventiveness but just might have lost its ‘weirdest show on TV’ credentials now that Twin Peaks is back. 8/10

Nick Joy