Even though there’s clear video evidence that he couldn’t be the murderer, Terry Maitland still needs his day in court, and that’s when things get very interesting.

The second part of the HBO adaptation of Stephen King’s novel does the sort of things that any other show would save for later in its run. But that’s not how King wrote it, and once you’ve recovered from the ‘I can’t believe they did that!’ moment you realise this show is going in different directions to the norm.

We get to see the mysterious hooded character again, this time at the media circus outside of the Cherokee County Courthouse and the home of an attempted suicide. Detective Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn) is on administrative leave, but can’t rest with so many unanswered questions. We discover that he and his wife have lost a son, and it’s something he hasn’t got over.

Things get very interesting when Anderson visits Maitland’s wife – after all, this is the man who orchestrated the arrest of her husband – and he tries to make sense of how the murder van and the Maitlands were in the same place at the same time. A casual remark from a young daughter suddenly brings some of the coincidences into sharp relief and the bigger picture becomes clearer.

Verdict: A confident show that rips up the rule book on what happens in murder mysteries. With assured direction from Jason Bateman and a tight script by Richard Price, it feels like all bets are off and that this could go anywhere. What a treat. 9/10

Nick Joy