The second episode of The Purge opens with our silent, masked man preparing a simple lunch, packing it and then loading a van full of guns while listening to motivational tapes.

At the time, you think it’s a perfect microcosm of the show and its premise: heavy calibre Rockwell. Americana red in tooth and claw.

The truth is though that the next scene is the show’s heart. Miguel comes across a volunteer ambulance in a nice throwback (or perhaps, forward?) to The Purge: Election Year. The two people running it are barely trained, but on the street, doing their best and only kept safe by the unwritten law that you don’t mess with the trauma vans. It’s a lovely moment. Nuanced, dark, human, subtle and shot through with the bare-faced hypocrisy of the Purge itself. Freedom from context but not consequence. America looking the other way in its Purge masks as the working classes are either hunted for sport or try frantically to put those who have been hunted back together.

That double-edged, nuanced approach is the heart of the show’s other plots too. Melissa, one of the sacrifices, decides she’d really rather not be killed horribly in order to go to paradise, making the reassurances of her friends all the more chilling. Amanda Warren’s Jane is revealed to either be paranoid about her boss David or genuinely being held back. David is revealed to either be a borderline sexual harasser or a man who genuinely connects with his employees.

It’s most true of Rick, Jenna and Lila, who continue to struggle with the romantic tensions of the party they’re all attending. The contrast between the upper class socialites and their problems and Miguel’s plot was stark already. With the show cleverly cutting between the gauntlet Miguel is forced to run and the party watching the livestream it couldn’t be any starker. Then, of course, you see that Miguel’s prize for surviving is an American muscle car and we’re back to the bloody knuckled American dream.

There’s a lovely, loaded conversation too between Jane and Alison, one of her staff. A nice bonding moment turns into a joke about purging a bad date which in turn becomes a discussion of the logistics of outsourcing your Purge list. That leads to a flashback where we see Jane recruit her assassin and, again, we see both sides of the show. The strong, successful professional black professional woman and the strong, successful black female professional killer. Again, the show asks who is making the bad choices. Again, the show lets us answer and again, the show is stronger for it.

This is the start of the ramp up, and the show is already tying plots together in surprising ways. It’s also clearly benefitting from the space it’s being given and this is arguably the most measured, deep exploration of the premise so far.

Verdict: It’s going to be a long Purge night for the characters but it’s going great for the viewers so far. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart