Colter stops for gas, meets a dog and gets into a whole load of trouble.

Tracker is always at its best when it’s at its most personal. The show’s done a great job so far of balancing the ‘handsome dude solves crimes’ premise with a deep kindness and a remarkably modest approach to the spotlight. No one in this show is just a character, there’s always a sense of them having a life before we meet them. This week is no exception, but this week the first character we meet is a dog.

Justin Hartley’s slightly cautious, fundamental decency has always been comparable to Alan Ritchson’s on Reacher and both of them excel when paired with a fellow goodest boy. This episode works especially well because the dog is a Tracker character, in that he’s got a lot more going on than you first think. As Colter tracks his story, we meet his family, including Aiden (Aiden Stoxx), who hires Colter to find his dog in possibly the show’s most adorable scene to date. As we dig deeper, the show gets some nice action beats and, again, goes deeper than you’d think. The villains of the piece aren’t just villains, and the show finds an angle on ‘veterans in trouble in civilian life’ that I’ve not seen before. The fact Seamus Dever, who stole the show on Castle and Titans, is one of the initial antagonists helps too.

Tracker episodes work best when they’re structured like Colter works, digging backwards into the truth. This is one of the best to date, not just because of the complex characters it spotlights, but because of the humanity the show is so good at it too. There’s a bookend pair of scenes with Aiden that hold no surprises but are beautifully played and very sweet and an ending that feels like a real step forward for Colter as a character.

Verdict: It’s a lovely way to spend 44 minutes or so, and one of the best episodes of this weird, strong, season so far. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart