Hoping to mend her relationship with her sister Ruby, Leti turns a ramshackle property on Chicago’s North Side into a boarding house – an endeavour that stokes neighbourhood racism and awakens dormant spirits in the house.

Another cracking episode, demonstrating that this impressive show knows what it’s doing, and can consistently deliver the goods. Based on the 37-page second chapter/story in Matt Ruff’s novel, called The Dreams of the Which House (itself a riff on the title of H P Lovecraft’s 1932 short story The Dreams in the Witch House) the focus is on Leti who has inherited a sum of money and decided to invest it in a property located in a white neighbourhood.

One of the issues that I foresaw in translating the book to screen was the episodic nature of the stories and the fact that not all the regular characters appear in all the chapters. But as was demonstrated in the previous episode, where a character unexpectedly bit the dust, the show is doing its own thing and finds ways to weave in all the leads.

This episode belongs to Jurnee Smollett’s Letitia – she’s phenomenal when she grabs a baseball bat and takes out the windscreens and headlights of the racist neighbours’ cars. Her relationships with her sister and Tic allow her to show both her strength and vulnerability and she has to show her fortitude when zombie ghosts start terrorising her.

As with every episode of the show so far, nothing is as straightforward as it first appears. This is no straight haunted house story – there are no coincidences in this universe – and the wider story arc reveals itself again before the hour is up. Once more, the action set pieces are top drawer, the gore effects being particularly visceral, though the victims are particularly deserving of their fates.

Verdict: Lovecraft Country is 3/3 so far, each episode like a mini-movie, bursting with big ideas and compelling drama. It’s my favourite hour of the week. 9/10

Nick Joy