Gully decides he’s fed up of being cooped up in his underground base, causing a bit of mayhem with a much-needed day out. Daveboy struggles with feelings of guilt over Jessica’s death. Martha and Thomas struggle to overcome the secrets between them.

Well, this one escalated quickly! How do you keep an arrogant unpredictable ex-soldier who’s now a superhero from going AWOL when he starts feeling a bit cooped up? Turns out the answer is you don’t – Gully decides enough is enough and goes off for a bit of fresh air. In the process, mayhem and carnage follow, and of course it falls to Alfie to go after his former boss and try to bring him in quietly and quickly. No easy task anyway, but made a little harder still by the fact the man is pining for his ex-wife and still very aware of the fact that Alfie slept with her…

Daveboy is struggling with feelings of guilt. He’s never been a very complicated character, and certainly doesn’t usually have an issue with violence. But he’s feeling bad partly because Jessica was a young woman but more importantly, because he knows she was innocent. The injustice of the thing doesn’t sit well with him, and he decides to attend her parents’ funeral in an attempt at making amends. That’s Daveboy, the hard-drinking ex-soldier going to the funeral of a genteel, wealthy couple with all their family and friends in attendance, so he can make a speech of his own. Have a rough guess at how well that’s likely to work out and you probably won’t be far wrong.

Martha and Thomas meanwhile, have some very complicated issues to work through. Coming at the same problem from opposite ends, when they sit down to pool what they know, things get very complex indeed. Doesn’t help that Thomas then tries to persuade his father to do the right thing, in the process alerting the elder Wayne to just how much Martha, and by extension soon the British Government, knows about what’s happened. That brings Patrick’s lady friend into the picture, and that means a great deal of messiness indeed.

Between all the darkness, there’s some lighter parts. Mrs P and Martha having an honest discussion about Mrs P’s recent adventures in Lonely hearts sees each woman able to give sage advice to the other from their own respective experiences, while having a few giggles on the way. Daveboy manages to make a new friend, and Lucius continues to be confounded by the lives of ordinary folks.

But I think my favourite part here is Daveboy – here we not only find out his given name, but start to get some real insight into the actual person beneath all the bluster and whisky. He’s a killer and a man for whom violence is just a way of life, but he’s also got a strong sense of right and wrong, and the mind to ensure that the former triumphs over the latter. That’s nice to have in a show like this, especially when your main protagonist is quite as morally flexible as Alfred Pennyworth, and I hope we get to see more of this as the show moves forward.

Verdict: An episode of highs and lows, all of them enjoyable to watch. 9/10

Greg D. Smith