Ruth Deaver finds herself unstuck in time as she struggles with the intruder in her house.

Over the first six episodes of this series I have constantly been distracted by the Stephen King references, but in this spellbinding instalment my focus was all on the story, and Kingisms be damned. Until now I’ve been frustrated at how little Sissy Spacek’s Ruth has been used; King’s erstwhile Carrie is a fantastic actor and yet she had very much been consigned to the background. Fret no more, as this is her episode… and it’s a tour de force.

Series lead Andre Holland (Henry Deaver) has barely one scene, with all focus on his adoptive mother. The previous episode ended with The Kid arriving at the family home, wearing Deaver Senior’s burial suit and we pick up immediately from there, while also moving backwards in time. Ruth is like Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, revisiting key moments in her life, but this time doing it as a survival mechanism. Through the fog of her Alzheimer’s she desperately sees herself reliving important moments so that she can use that knowledge to help herself in the present – one flashback shows her learning a sleight of hand magic trick from would-be magician Alan Pangborn… it proves vital later.

What’s particularly effective is the way that in flashbacks the other characters may be played by different actors, depending on the age, but Ruth remains constant, at her current age. Max Richter’s On the Nature of Daylight, used so memorably in Arrival, Stranger than Fiction, Shutter Island and The Innocents is featured on the soundtrack, essaying the episode’s heartbreaking final few moments. Nothing will be the same again.

Verdict: When Westworld pulled Kiksuya out of the hat earlier this year I assumed we’d seen the best written episode of TV in 2018. Now I’m not so sure, as this is a beautifully-constructed meditation on time and the tragedy of losing memory. Superlative. 10/10

Nick Joy