With the ships abandoned, the crew deal with the fallout of the attack on the Inuit hunting party.

It’s April 1848 and messages are being left in brass tubes at strategically-placed cairns, detailing what’s happened to the crews – and yet we know that it’s all too late. The brave soldiers know that no-one is going to rescue them, and we as viewers also know that the cavalry (or at least the Royal Navy) won’t be charging over the hill to their aid. And that’s what makes this series so upsetting and addictive at the sane time. By rights we should be turning away and leaving the doomed souls to their misery, and yet we can’t help but watch what happens next.

There’s a telling scene where James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies) reveals his secrets, particularly how he got his favourable posting… it was all a lie. He created a false, gilded life of vanity, and yet here they are now at the very end of vanity, desperately living on one-third rations with scurvy taking hold – we witness nasty weeping black lesions on bodies and teeth falling out of retreating gums.

Crozier (Jared Harris) is just about holding it together as senior officer, and hasn’t been taken in by Tozier and Hickey, who he (correctly) charges with sedition and mutinous design. But just as these bad seeds are about to be be taken out of the equation, the magical polar beast turns up and splits the group, giving the mutineers the opportunity to make their escape, and with arms.

Verdict: Never has it been clearer that the greatest challenge the stranded sailors face is not the weather, environment or spirit bear, but themselves. With two separate, armed parties out in the wilderness, each gunning for one another, a showdown is inevitable. 8/10

Nick Joy