Niko contacts Mel for help after a young girl who may have been kidnapped by a cult turns up at her home. But the Charmed ones have problems of their own – Harry is facing the consequences of his relationship with Charity, Parker is still very sick and Macy hasn’t heard from Galvin in some time.

There’s no rest for the wicked, so the old saying goes, and it seems that the same applies to the Charmed Ones as well, who really have their hands full on multiple fronts this week. The issue is, the solutions to certain of those troubles tie together a little too neatly.

That said, there’s much to recommend the episode. Rupert Evans’ portrayal of Harry’s rapid ageing after the Elders strip him of his powers is surprisingly sensitive and emotional, resisting the urge to play the thing for too many laughs. The prosthetics that build up as he gets older throughout the episode are also decent – perhaps not the level of a movie but not so bad as to look silly. It really is starting to feel that the girls are getting ever closer to their Whitelighter, and this episode makes good use of that relationship to really tug at the heartstrings when it needs to.

It’s also interesting to see Mel’s ongoing struggle between her lingering feelings for Niko and the complications of her current relationship with Jada. More so than in any other episode so far, it feels this week as if Mel takes charge on more than one occasion, calling the shots and convincing her sisters to follow, and set against the fragility of her own internal feelings with her heart torn between two women, it makes for a fascinating dynamic.

It’s also lovely to see Roswell’s Tyler Blackburn guest-starring as this episode’s Monster of the Week: an awful ‘bro-demon’ with way too high an opinion of himself who constitutes – as one of the girls puts it – a walking ‘Freudian Nightmare’. Blackburn has always been one of the stronger performers on Roswell, and this episode shows why, with a turn that couldn’t be more different from his character in that show if it tried, and really slows him to have some fun.

Elsewhere, there’s a whole lot of unanswered mysteries. What exactly are the Sarcana up to, and what will Fiona do when her powers are fully restored? Is there really a black and white choice between the Elders and the Sarcana? Will we ever see Galvin again? As the show moves towards the conclusion of its first season, it’s really starting to gather momentum, and indicate that it’s got a lot more nuance and depth in store for us than might have been suggested early on.

Verdict: It’s an odd cocktail of narrative convenience and genuinely gripping story and set pieces, but on balance it works extremely well. 8/10

Greg D. Smith