Sherwood, series 2, episode 2, review: full-throttle hour ends with brutal, blindsiding twist
Spoiler warning: contains major plot details of Sherwood, series 2 episode 2
In the second episode of Sherwood (BBC One), the start methodically set up the finish. Two Bransons did target practice in the woods as three Bottomleys, in hiding from just this threat, detectorised in an open field. It was neat and tidy storytelling, which climaxed with a blindsiding twisteroo that introduced the most unexpected avenger this side of Midsomer Murders. Step forward, Stephie Bottomley (Bethany Asher, excellent), who has Down’s syndrome. She possibly didn’t find those garden shears with a metal detector.
Stephie’s surprise intervention, finishing off Kyre Branson (Conor Deane), nudges the body count up to four. To think we had only a brace in the whole first series. To make Stephie one of the killers suggests that Sherwood, although still inspired by real events, is pivoting with aplomb into genre.
That scriptwriter James Graham isn’t a criminal mastermind – any more than those dim Bransons, chucking evidence around like confetti – perhaps shows in some less than elegant plotting. It felt convenient, for example, that the Bottomleys chose to leave the safe house for a day out in town at the precise moment the Bransons arrived looking for them.
Then when Pam Bottomley (Sharlene Whyte) rang the police to raise the alarm, she just happened to get the mole who’d given away their location. Meanwhile, Daphne Sparrow (Lorraine Ashbourne) extracted her son Rory’s secret by unlocking his smartphone with his finger as he obligingly slept like a baby. That subterfuge led her to long-lost daughter Rachel (Christine Bottomley, no relation), though as the story had its foot to the floor there was only the briefest window to explore the discovery. Perhaps later?
Sherwood feels at its most confident when not racking its brains for ways to make a gripping plot hurtle forward. Hence two consummate scenes between Lesley Manville as the widowed Julie Jackson and David Morrissey as ex-superintendent Ian St Clair, collaborating beautifully in the quiet art of being still and true.
Both are survivors from series one, when James Graham wrote so commandingly about the impact of politics on communities. He is still working that seam, but from a fresh angle. As Ann Branson (Monica Dolan) coldly invoked Mrs Thatcher’s idea that there’s no such thing as a society – “Only men, women and families” – her own family was off hunting down another. You can’t wait for her and Roy (a glorious Stephen Dillane) to find out about the shears.