The year’s most batshit (and batshit-obsessed) new drama shows no signs of slowing down. While this episode was slightly less jam-packed than last week’s, it still squeezed in a duel ending in an execution, a thumbectomy, a murder, a brutal bit of battery, the imminent possibility of a huge explosion and an exorcism to make the late William Peter Blatty proud.
We also got confirmation that Solomon Coop is several steps ahead of Sir Stuart Strange, that Dumbarton might be playing his own devious game, that the boy in the farm is James’s (and presumably Zilpha’s) son and that the unflappable Lorna Bow, reader of private letters and wader through lakes, is the mistress of the putdown. Go, Lorna – in a show devoid of heroes, you’re the no-nonsense heroine we need.
‘I shot him between the eyes and a host of devils flew out of the hole in his head and down the river’
James Delaney may have spent the night grunting, growling and using his mini-scythes of torture on unfortunate spies, but the evening’s creepiest scenes belonged to Thorne and Zilpha Geary. From their initial meeting after the duel, in which he bitterly lamented the state of their marriage, through his brutal beating of her to the horrifying exorcism at the episode’s end, the battling Gearys gave new meaning to the term domestic noir. As a broken Zilpha blankly cradled a hatpin while her drunken husband slumped on the bed, I began to wonder if this series was heading into Audition territory. Luckily for the squeamish among us, she changed her mind about sticking him with the pointy end. But Thorne’s days are surely numbered – if one Delaney doesn’t kill him, the other most certainly will.
‘I am inside your heads, gentlemen, always’
While his sister fought with her brutish husband, James had battles of his own. This week’s random acts of violence include chopping off a man’s thumb to make a point about loyalty and slicing another across the stomach to deter any further attempts to uncover his various misdeeds. It’s worth noting that while a lot of people – Lorna, Winter, Brace, Godfrey, Zilpha – don’t want James to die, he hasn’t done much to justify that faith, choosing instead to stomp around furiously and endanger them all.
He may also be losing the intelligence war, given that Dumbarton was able to expose both the whereabouts of the nascent gunpowder-making factory and the main people involved. I wonder about Dumbarton: Carlsbad is meant to be the head of the US spy operation, but she knew nothing about the gunpowder (or at least wanted James to think she knew nothing). What game is the suave surgeon/spy playing? Is he working for the US government, or is this a rebel plan? Either way, he’s put the pressure on young Delaney at just the wrong moment. Following the law of Chekhov’s gun, I shall be disappointed if we don’t get an enormous gunpowder explosion by the time this series is done.
‘We’ve screwed maharajahs. We’ve screwed moguls. This man is merely a London mongrel … so come on, give me ideas’
If Delaney was feeling the pressure, it was nothing compared to Strange, as Coop turned the screws on the East India Company with the help of campaigning lawyer George Chichester. Chichester has spent years searching for the truth about the sinking of a slave ship (the very one James Delaney was on? Possibly) but to little avail. Now Coop has offered him his day in court. This is important not simply because the EIC may have sunk the ship, but also because they were at that point no longer supposed to have any involvement in the slave trade. My presumption is that the EIC was involved in illegal slave trading, which was about to come to light, and they had the ship sunk and the human cargo destroyed (it’s also possible that Delaney was the whistleblower and thus conveniently on the ship when it was sunk). No wonder Strange was ordering the supercilious Wilton to destroy any evidence bearing his name. Things are about to get very dirty indeed.
Additional notes
• We switched directors this week with Anders Engström, best known for intense Swedish drama Thicker Than Water, taking over duties. So far I approve – the whole thing looked like a darker, danker take on Gainsborough or Constable and the duel reminded me of Kubrick’s wonderful Barry Lyndon.
• I liked the outcome of the duel, from the revelation that the EIC was protecting James to his execution of the unfortunately named Mr Hope.
• This week’s award for an acclaimed actor in an eye-catching supporting role goes to Lucian Msamati, most recently an outstanding Iago at the RSC Stratford but known to Game of Thrones fans as amiable pirate Salladhor Saan. He turned up as lawyer George Chichester, a man with a nice line in weary putdowns.
• The news that James is the older sibling will infuriate timeline purists everywhere. I’m going with the idea that his mother was incarcerated when he was very young and his father took up with Zilpha’s mother almost immediately after.
• Thorne Geary is a terrible human being, but I’m rather taken with his champagne-and-potatoes metaphor for life.
• Tom Hollander deserves a special award just for his delivery of the line, “Almost as good as the batshit distillations of Burma.”
• Thoyt would have no luck at Cheltenham races with that attitude towards Gypsies.
• Of course Prince George eats ostrich eggs for breakfast.
Most magnificently brooding Tom Hardy moment
While I was fond of this week’s ritual (sitting up a tree in the dark like a giant brooding crow) I’m giving this to James’s decision to burn all his father’s letters and drawings without reading them while contemplating his mother’s sad fate. Issues, much?
Most fantastically baroque threat of the week
“Not only is she among the large group of women I’d sleep with, she’s also among the much smaller group of women I would masturbate over.” More a statement of fact than a threat, but Cholmondeley’s blunt honesty wins the week.
So what did you think? Will Zilpha murder Thorne? Can Strange see off the combined threat of Crown, Coop and Chichester – and is it just me or does James Delaney bear a marked resemblance to MMA star Conor McGregor? As ever, all speculation and no spoilers welcome below…
