After the mutineers have made their escape during the creature attack on the open ice, the remaining crew members lick their wounds and prepare for the end.

There’s a lovely scene at the beginning of this penultimate episode where Lady Jane (Greta Scacchi) makes a plea to the London Cultural Society, having been welcomed to the stage by Charles Dickens, asking for support to mount a rescue mission for her husband Sir John. What makes the scene so poignant is that we know he perished long ago, and that any rescue will be far too late. That ship has sailed, unlike the abandoned Terror and Erebus, crushed in the ice.

With 32 dead and 23 unaccounted for, Captain Crozier (Jared Harris) only recognises Mr Honey the carpenter from the scarf around his neck, the head being pulverised to pulp. The strategy now is to burn the dead and press on south, leaving unwanted supplies in a tidy pile for anyone/anything that might want them. It’s hard to describe an adjective more extreme than despairing, but that’s exactly where the survivors are at. The lucky ones are already dead, particularly when you’ve resorted to eating your own boot leather for sustenance.

Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies) is in a very bad from the scurvy, his lesions becoming impossible to disguise, and he’s now reduced to being a sick man dragged along in the boat. The moral quandary here is whether they leave the sick behind and press on.

One of the pleasures of the series has been watching Adam Nagaitis as Hickey, transforming from a mildly subordinate crew member to a psychotic leader of the mutineers. The ease in which he murders a sick man is quite horrific, but nothing like the nausea-inducing scene where the crew tuck into his body parts after Goodsir is forced to butcher him.

Verdict: Cannibalism, disease and self-sacrifice; it won’t be long before these lost souls are put out of their misery, but can we expect any spark of hope before this ice-locked shipwreck of a tale reaches its climax? 8/10

Nick Joy