Frank Castle’s mission of vengeance is over. The last person responsible for his family’s murder has been killed. Now Frank Castle is dead, and Pete Castiglione works on a construction site – still haunted by ghosts of the past. He doesn’t want to connect with anyone there… but then young Donny Chavez gets in trouble…

To go from Thor Ragnarok to this in the space of two weeks is quite a change (and that’s probably my understatement of 2017!), demonstrating just how versatile the Marvel Cinematic Universe is. There’s a reference to superheroes in this opening instalment of Netflix’s gun-heavy Punisher solo saga, but it’s the sort that any youngster might make about a father who’s been taken too soon; it’s not a reference to the Avengers and their ilk. The Manhattan that Frank gazes at across the river doesn’t have Spider-Man casually swinging past the camera. It’s a down and dirty, and brutal world, where veterans feel that they’ve not simply been discarded but are actively being trod into the dirt. And where a young kid, desperate to fit in with the older guys on the building site, joins in a raid that goes very very badly wrong…

The violence that you’d associate with the Punisher is present and correct – from the pre-credits end of mission to his rescue of Donny and subsequent erasure of the bad guys – but there’s far more to The Punisher than this. Jon Bernthal’s performance is both sympathetic and challenging, and while we’ve not really had more than a few broad strokes for the supporting characters as yet, there’s a lot of potential there.

Verdict: Far more engaging for the audience than the opener of Iron Fist, you definitely get the feeling that Marvel TV will take their time telling this story. 8/10

Paul Simpson