The French contingent find vital information about Bill. The English contingent are devastated by a brutal attack. Bill begins to lean into his role as a monster.

For anyone who forgot the fate of the poor French gendarme whose gutted corpse we got to watch float away, this episode has all the receipts for you. From the moment poor Scarlet (Donna Banya) comes back covered with blood and with something in her chest, anyone who’s seen The Dark Knight goes foetal. The resulting explosion, and rout of the English forces is as barbarous as it is successful and leaves Bill and the last people Bill wants to be isolated with on their own.

We’ll get back to them because the meat of the episode here is in France.

Léa Drucker and Emilie de Preissac are especially great here and the fractious, forced family unit they’re the heart of is a massively grim and deeply compelling one. Drucker has a scene here where she loses it trying to get a backpack off a child’s corpse which is something only this show could do. It’s horrific and absurd and terrifying and desperately sad and you hate it and you do not stop watching. Likewise Féodor Atkine as Victor, the new character introduced mid suicide attempt who walks them all through a crash course in grief that could best be summed up by ‘Deal with it or don’t.’ It’s not fun, at all, but if you want an unflinching portrayal of life during wartime and the quiet moments of grace in grief and tragedy, then you want this. Plus Paul Gorostidi as last soldier standing Nathan is doing nice work as a stoical, terrified grunt aware he’s not the protagonist of his story and, for them to win, he may well have to die.

Meanwhile, in London, things are even worse! Even before Scarlet exploded, Byrne’s gloriously stretched and pained Bill is in the doghouse. Stephen Campbell-Moore and Natasha Little clearly latch onto the rage Sarah and Jonathan feel at what Bill’s done and is doing. Bill in the meantime is leaning into something close to a friendship with Emily (Daisy Edgar-Jones) as the two realize their role in this is not everyone else’s. He’s who the invaders are here to stop. She’s possibly where the invaders come from. That’s terrifying, horrific common ground but it’s there nonetheless.

Verdict: Rounded out with a wonderfully matter of fact and ruthless performance from Pearl Chanda as Zoe, literally Bill’s last ‘friend’, this episode is character facing but moves a lot of pieces. All of them closer together. All of them on a collision course. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart