Nurse Ratched has to deal with more bodies and some horrific therapies; a dance is held for patients and staff; and killers go on the run.

As established in the opening episodes of Ryan Murphy’s glossy take on One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’s villain, this is a show that never stands still and can’t wait to share its next grisly OTT scenario. Once you’re in that groove and accept that everything operates at a heightened level of drama, there’s plenty to enjoy in a penny dreadful way.

One of the greatest joys has been in watching some of the supporting characters have a great time playing up their vices – Amanda Plummer is a body motel owner, and Sharon Stone vamps it up as wealthy femme fatale Lenore Osgood, hiring investigator/ hitman Corey Stoll to settle a grudge. But nothing goes to plan, and we witness one of the most disgusting deaths as skin is boiled off a body. It’s all in a day’s work for Sarah Paulson’s Mildred Ratched, who is just as happy dragging another corpse into the incinerator as blackmailing a superior or double-crossing a colleague.

Most of the time you just have to swallow the nonsense of it all – would a psychiatric hospital really have a dance between patients and, and would that mean that a multiple murderer is uncuffed and allowed to join in? But then there’s very little about this show that feels real, so you just roll with the next implausible twist, which includes a couple going all Bonnie and Clyde.

After the trauma of the dance debacle, the killers go on the run, leading to a further bloodbath and more political machinations. Ratched is at the centre of it all, and we finally find our just what happened to her and her brother to make them the monsters they are today. This awful back story doesn’t so much excuse them as to explain why they see the world the way that they do, and why they’re looking out for another.

Verdict: Once you’ve retuned your brain to the same frequency as the bizarre logic in the world of Ratched, you’ll find each episode flies by, building up the body count, blackmails and twists. I still think it’s gaudy nonsense, but like Dr Hanover, you just can’t help tying that tourniquet and shooting up another dose. 8/10

Nick Joy