Little Suzy is being woken up in the night by her new parents’ dead daughter, and evil forces are stopping people from leaving town.

This is so infuriating! Every week, this show gets better and yet we know that at the end of the ten weeks there will be no more. I only hope that based on positive critical feedback the powers that be might reconsider a future revival, but that seldom happens.

We’re here at the halfway mark and the Justice League Dark lineup is shaping up nicely – Swamp Thing, Madame Xanadu and Blue Devil. The latter, under the guise of Dan Cassidy, finds he physically cannot leave town, his arm bursting into blue flames as he hits the town boundary, and he even has the full superhero costume in the trunk of his car, emitting a blue glow!

Alec the Swamp Thing is having flashbacks to when he was still human, and he’s having visions of all the dead people in town, but the most telling flashback is for Abby, who goes back to when Shawna jumped off the bridge as a teenager. We discover that it wasn’t the jump that killed her, but some underwater assailant dragging her under.

Avery (a slimy Will Patton) is still sleeping with Sheriff Cable, intimidating those who are standing in his way, and even sending his lackeys to threaten reporter Liz Tremayne when she refuses to back her away from her story about corruption in Marais and the disappearance of Avery’s banker. She’s coping just fine and then Dan Cassidy stumbles in and gets struck down by a crowbar – surely this will waken the Blue Devil inside?

Verdict: Multiple story threads grow at a frantic pace, with all cast members playing a valuable role in this show’s narrative. It might be called Swamp Thing, but this is an ensemble piece, with no weak link in the lineup. Such an exciting hour. 8/10

Nick Joy