College professor Jeff returns home to find his father has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The weapon is a beautiful item that carries a bullet literally with his name in it.

After three weeks of politicising and morality tales comes this very welcome thriller by The X Files’ Glen Morgan, designed purely to intrigue and entertain – and it’s a welcome relief. The IT Crowd’s Chris O’Dowd is our Everyman Jeff (one of many Jeffs in this episode) who succumbs to the hypnotic spell of legendary weapon The Blue Scorpion, a gangster gun that is scared of the dark and possesses its owners.

We never really find out why O’Dowd’s father had the gun in the first place – it just seems to travel round from place to place, either to meet a self-fulfilling prophecy or to set a series of steps in motion. Even throwing the gun into the middle of a lake isn’t enough to stop it from washing up on the shore. There’s a bit of hokum exposition around animism and the way that some items are treated as if they had a soul… or maybe it’s just that old-fashioned horror trope of a possessed murder weapon. It doesn’t really matter.

Verdict: Director Craig William Macneill (Channel Zero) unnerves us with obtuse camera angles, crazy framing and general paranoia in this classic Twilight Zone that benefits from a fine, unhinged leading role by Chris O’Dowd. Gain extra brownie points if you spotted that the recurring weekly reference to 1015 is this time the gun’s serial number. 8/10

Nick Joy