One of the most interesting things, for me, about The Handmaid’s Tale is the way the show takes a single concept and threads it through an entire episode. We’ve seen this before, with ‘Birth Day’ and here it’s the concept of being late, and what it means, and what it costs.

Front and centre of course is Offred faced with yet another of her seemingly impossible choices. Everyone else has decided she’s probably pregnant, and in doing so taken even more from her. Offred is denied control, even knowledge, of her own body. The need for Serena Joy to have a child is so great that the household simply decides Offred is pregnant and that’s that.

The awful thing is how much her life improves. She’s brought breakfast, talked to as, if not an equal then certainly a well educated and liked underling. She’s given the illusion of life, of choice even as she knows this is a soap bubble existence that cannot possibly end well. The question then becomes not if her period is late, but if she bails out of this situation too late.

And she does. Because there’s no easy or early time that could possibly have led to a different outcome. And she pays a price for it, yet again, punished for existing where not a minute previously she was rewarded for it.

Then there’s Ofwarren for whom it’s been too late since the start. Like Offred she’s living in a soap bubble. Unlike Offred she doesn’t know it. The offhand remark in the Wives conversation, about how much easier it will be when the child is weaned, tells us everything we need to know. Ofwarren is a commodity and a spent one. Whether she’ll be used up and discarded or sent to another house doesn’t matter. Neither fate is kind. Neither fate is one she can see coming. And, worst of all, Offred’s face throughout that conversation tells us she knows she can’t warn her friend either.

Then there’s the flashbacks, which continue to be one of the show’s most impressive elements. June and Moira’s wiling blindness to events is yanked away as sharply as their careers and yet they still choose to believe something can be done. The moment at the riot where the police come forward with machine guns is the moment their lives are shattered along with their world. It’s too late. Everything has changed under them and they didn’t act in time. It’s not their fault. That doesn’t matter.

But ‘Late’ here truly applies to Ofglen. Alexis Bledel is astounding this week. Seriously, if you want to make a note now of this being the performance the Emmys criminally overlook next year? Do so. Because it deserves every single award. Bledel says nothing this entire episode and yet she speaks volumes. As Oflgen is tried, sentenced to redemption and shares a horrific final car journey with the love of her life Bledel’s anguished eyes tell you everything you need. The direction is sparse, careful and unblinking. The events are horrifying. Bledel’s performance holds you even when you want to look away, even in the closing moments when the most callous, horrifying crime yet is perpetrated on Ofglen. She loses her partner. She loses her identity. She loses an intensely, horrendously intimate part of her anatomy. She’s killed in every way but physical death. She’s killed in every way other than the single one that would grant her release.

Verdict: This is the hardest hour of TV you’ll watch this month. It’s also one of the best. Yet another barnstorming turn from this staggeringly impressive show. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart