Since they’re putting The Five epis up back to back on Sky1, I figured I’d use that as an excuse to binge and find out what the Sam Hill was going on after the end of the first one. Spoilers after the break!

Okay, hold on, ’cause there’s lots: *deep breath* Young Mark Wells wanted to go play in the deepest, darkest woods with his age-appropriate pals Danny, Slade and Pru but was stuck looking after his totally boring little brother Jesse, so he ditched Jesse crying his wee heart out at the entrance to the wood. Jesse disappeared and eventually a pedophile named Jakob (but in my head Boris the Blade) confessed to his murder. THEN, 20 years later, Jesse’s DNA shows up at a crime scene conveniently being investigated by his brother’s childhood friend Danny, with whom Jesse’s brother Mark is still close.

ALSO, a young woman missing for five years has been found by Slade and helped by Mark and Pru, she says there are others. Oh and Slade is a stone cold killer, yo, shooting a dude right in the face without so much as a “you killed my father!” Right, let’s roll E2!

We open in the Platinum Hall, a songwriter is explaining that art doesn’t have to take time; he wrote “Lucky Girl” for Belynda while she got coffee (schedule mixup) and then he leads the excited family in to the studio, where the magic happens. He’s Jay Newman (Lee Boardman) and I assume the young lady with her parents will be looking at making music with him.

He demonstrates the soundproofness of the studio and right then I know he’s a wrong ‘un. That turns out to be the case, as we follow an outside fan down through a ventilation system to a cache of scared young women and a non-functioning toilet in a similarly sound-proofed room behind where the magic happens.

The suspect Danny nabbed carrying Annie Green’s phone is sitting waiting in an interview room while Danny tries to compare his image with that of young Jesse. Mickey comes in to advise him that Annie’s mobile phone is registered to an address that doesn’t exist any longer, the building was razed two years ago. Danny asks where the bills are going then and gets a shrug in return. So helpful. Mickey’s onnit!

Danny calls Mark to advise him of the arrest, Maybe-Jesse isn’t talking but his prints have come back clean. MJ is the right age, Danny confirms and now Alan is listening too. Danny asks Mark to not come to the station, and DON’T TELL YOUR MOM! She keeps CALLING!

Awww a nice idyllic pond scene, shattered by Slade tromping in to get rid of the gun he used to shoot Kenton in the FACE. He keeps the silencer, though, that seems unwise, and flashes back to chasing through the woods after Jesse.

The suspect has a solicitor present now, and is ready to speak and give his name, not Fcuk Hugh as it turns out, but rather Joe Hanley. Danny asks if he’s ever changed his name, was Joe born with a different name, perhaps? And where are you from, Joe Hanley? Joe wants to know where this is going, like you would, and Danny drops the murder inquiry tidbit. And how about Joe’s parents, what are their names?

Joe is getting even more weirded out, look, he found the phone, okay? And he was just turning it on to see who it belonged to when the police arrived with bells and lights flashing. Okay, all right, he ran because he works for a big accountancy firm who would skid his arse at the news of a theft conviction. I bet they’d be even LESS pleased about a murder inquiry! Danny cuts to the chase: will “Joe” give a DNA sample? Joe’s lawyer is willing, but Joe wants a “proper brief” and I don’t know what that means.

We’re at the shelter with Gemma now, she’s flashing back to being chained to the wall back in the studio while Dr. Pru checks her out. Slade comes in; he makes a joke about not seeing Pru for years and now she’s everywhere! Is that why he killed Laura’s husband Kenton; the reason Laura dumped Mark? Because if Mark is busy consoling her…Pru is fair game? Still married to StEEEEWWWWWWWart, of course.

He asks about Gemma, who’s okay but has little vampire bites all over her neck and I really can’t stress enough right now that Gemma needs to go to the police. It’s not about betraying trust, it’s about the others still out there and the fella should have called the police when he saw her, not Slade. Still no sign of Britnay, who was shocked into running when she saw Gemma.

Back at the police station, DI Townsend is surprised by Joe’s official choice of attorney, Owens is extremely expensive and the charge seemed minor at first. He’s called the Weasel, even, because he’s small and extremely aggressive. Nothing to do with rabies.

JokeySquared really are a couple of meatheads, hey? Walking down the hall talking about the women they’ve been trying to pick up ($100 says they don’t call them “women”!) and then openly staring at Ally’s arse. I mean

Danny comes out front to find Alan and Mark waiting, he drags them off to looks at pictures of Joe / Maybe-Jesse but no way they can know. Jesse was 5 when he disappeared, and hey! Jesse was 5!! What kind of ahole says he’ll take care of his five year old brother and then ditches him in the woods to find his way home alone?? What the HELL?

DI Townsend walks by to find Alan waxing poetic about Jesse’ chocolate button eyes vs. Joe’s muddy peepers, he just keeps walking while Danny says he’s ordered an age progression photo done of Jesse, but what Danny really needs is a photo of Alan at whatever age Jesse would be now.  Mark and Danny talk a bit about Annie, the murdered woman, and that’s why Alan is refusing to believe Jesse is alive: if he is, he’s most likely a murderer. Horses from the hoofbeats and all.

Mark surreptitiously takes a photo of the victim, and we go to the interview with Joe and the Weasel. It seems Joe has an excellent alibi (work function) and feels he was assaulted by Danny during the arrest. The Weasel does good work and Ally is predictable; protesting that Joe elbowing her in the face should matter. In the UK, I gather you need an arrest warrant to pick someone up? Now, Danny and everyone else were fully prepared to arrest the person with Annie’s cell phone, I’m not really sure how that gets Joe off, but it seems we’re headed that way.

Oh great, Mark’s sent the photo of Annie on the autopsy table to Slade, who’s printed off copies for everyone. All the kids mill around and nobody seems to recognise Annie, save one ginger who sideeyes, but Slade repeats again: everything will stay in house. He can’t do that!! Maybe don’t promise your shelter kids something you can’t or shouldn’t deliver, Jesse James, all of this should involve the police. Dangit. You know, like a 20-25 year old woman who says that there are other people being held captive. Oh for god’s sake, let’s not work on THAT, let’s work on a 21 -year-old cold case that the police are already investigating! BRILLIANT

Gemma’s parents are there to pick her up; it’s so lovely when they all hug. I fix on Mark for a bit while he stares at the floor so as not to intrude.

Pru tells Mark they should go for another drink again soon, yeah, yeah, he’d like that and so would Slade, standing there uninvited. Oh you too, Slade!

The sideeying ginger stops Slade and Mark in the hallway, he says Annie wasn’t a prossie. She used to get her coffee at a Starbucks where he shook a cup at, her name was Selena then and she dressed well. Too well to be a prostitute. Mark says she wasn’t dressed well that night and good gawd, man, can’t a woman wear a bunch of age-inappropriate synthetic-fibre clothing and a decent heel once in a while without being accused of being on the game? Ginger also says he figures Selena lived in the apartments opposite the coffee shop, go check it out Mark! Don’t tell the police or anything!

Mark has sussed out that “Annie” is really Selena Callaway, he calls his office to get his assistant to do some research. He hasn’t been in for a few days, so Larry (Syrus Lowe), the assistant, asks when he will be in? It’s worth mentioning that Larry is a bald black man in leopard print with a face full of expertly applied makeup; I wish most men knew what they were missing with their shunning of cosmetics. He looks absolutely GORGEOUS with a full, luscious pink lip, a full set of false lashes and blue shadow. Larry find Selena’s place of work right away and sends that off to Mark’s phone, done!

Slade’s calling BritNAY, who doesn’t pick up. He’s worried about her rabbitting at the sight of Gemma and he should be, Brit’s got a noose hanging in the doorway. She also has an apartment apparently. How does that work? Well, I know how apartments work, I mean, why does she stay in the shelter then?

Julie’s calling Danny AGAIN, and NO, she won’t stop calling, DANNY, is it BOTHERING you?? Jesse was her SON and she’ll call a thousand times if she wants to! They’re LINKED!

Mark gets himself thrown out of Porter and Starr, where Selena Callaway work(s)/(ed); Slade thinks he knows a way to get Mark past security. Mark doesn’t know what he’s doing, running around town showing pics of a dead woman, and yeah, that would be more of a police thing, yeah?

Mark’s distraught, he can’t get past looking for Jesse everywhere and is haunted by the question: if Jesse does turn out to be the murderer, would he rather Jesse be dead, like his dad wishes? It’s supposed to be a deep, meaningful scene, but it’s destroyed by the artificiality of the set-up; Pru grabbing Mark’s hand and then theatrically grabbing Slade’s as well and asking for a group hug.

Pru is back in her car now, being texted by her husband, Stuart, who quite reasonably wants to know where she is. She ignores and flashes back to the panic in the woods that day; she was worried Jesse was going to tell on them, but Slade promised to take care of it and ran off. We know Slade is a stone-cold killer, so there’s one possibility opening up. What were they doing in the woods?

Gemma called, she wants to meet Pru right away. Slade gets a disturbing message from BritNAY, she’s decided he’s right, she does have to deal with her problems, so she wanted to say goodbye and she loves him. He runs straight to her apartment and breaks the door down, to find her…alive and sitting on the bed and ready to talk.

She knows who kidnapped Gemma, it was her. Her confession is interspersed with Gemma’s revelations about what happened to her. Gemma was kept in a big house, only let out at night with an electric dog collar on, hence the vampire-like marks on her neck. I didn’t know you could get those for people, I have totally never even once thought about those for any of my darling children. The only two identifiable landmarks she can remember from the house are that it was next to a building shaped like an upside-down umbrella and there was a rusty swing-set.

Britnay says Jay would always take a girl with him when he was hunting for new girls; made it seem safer for the girls when he approached with another female. Like Karla Homolka made it seem safer for Paul Bernardo. Britnay was excited to be out at first, to talk to another person and make friends, but after realising what she’d helped facilitate, she tried to refuse, and failing that, tried to warn the other girl(s). That didn’t work either. Britnay can’t forgive herself for that, but she was also a victim, Slade tries to explain, but she’s struggling.

Jay started to take Gemma outside for picnics and for assault, she was finally able to make it away. Pru pushes Gemma to speak to Danny (great idea!) and Gemma agrees immediately, for the sake of the others still kept.

Danny is livid that Pru and them didn’t tell him straight away, but he’ll assemble a team to go over everything. Pru arrives home to find Stuart arguing on the phone (his American accent sounds so odd, I think I’m just watching British shows these days!) and her daughter very happy to see her. How long is this night?? Pru swallows a small yellow pill and the world goes hazy.

Slade’s big plan is a pair of pest removal outfits; it gets them right in! They brace Nigel in his office and ask all the questions say, the police would ask! Why are they there again? Okay, I’m stopping, but I’m still rolling my eyes, foryourinformation. Selena was a good-looking woman who liked to play the field, including the online world of Tindr. Slade knows from Tindr, but Nigel thinks it’s primitive. They ask if she used any aliases online, and does he know why she would use Annie Green? He about pops a gasket; that’s his ex-fiancee. Whuut?

Julie is shelving books at the library (I MUST find out where I know her from! She’s been in everything) when an extremely handsome young man stops and stares at her. She turns to shush some giggling girls and hawtie is gone.

Danny is mulling at the Murder Board; he tells Ally the disappearance of Jesse, the murder of Annie (Selena, but he doesn’t quite know that yet) and the reappearance of Gemma must all be connected. Off they drive, Danny snarl-driving and Ally wondering what kind of man can keep people while I wonder what kind of detective can be so inexperienced.

Ally wants to play MFK with Hillary Clinton, Keira Knightley and J.K. Rowling. Spoiler: he wants to kill them all. She’s worried about the investigation, though, people are saying Danny’s out to prove something because his old man handled Jesse’s disappearance originally. He tightly says they’re wrong, right yeah?

Stop the car, Ally’s seen an upside down umbrella! They’re out and looking for a swing-set and shouldn’t they have backup or an arrest warrant? I hear those are pretty important. They split up, too, don’t they understand how dangerous this could be?

They meet up at Jay’s place, Danny creeping up and taking a year off Ally’s life, this looks like the place for sure. They get no answer at the gate, but stop a neighbour on her way out for a jog and ask some questions. We get ANOTHER rendition of “Lucky Girl” sung at us, yaaaay, but honestly I’m just distracted by the fact that this woman’s nipples are staring directly at me. She doesn’t know much else, except that he only takes his dogs out at night and not even properly.

They shoo her and her nipples off and turn to leave, they better get that arrest warrant and all, but just then Jay pops out. They want to ask him some questions, sure! Come on it. He offers to show them where the magic happens, taking a charmed Ally into the soundproofed room to sing “Lucky Girl” again while the chained girls all scream as loudly as they can on the other side of the glass. Mark calls Danny during. They’ve got some leads on “Annie Green”, oh great, says Danny, when did you two become cops? I feel as though I don’t have to say anything right now.

Ally and Danny walk out, he wants to come back with a warrant. She doesn’t understand why, but there were no dogs, dogfood, dog paraphernalia or nary a sniff of dogs: this man does not keep dogs. So why does his neighbour think he does? And we’re oot.

So. Hmm. They’re suddenly very close to the Keeper of People, which is a little worrisome if he’s sussed that, he may get rid of the evidence, so to speak. Also, what’s the deal with Selena using her boss’s ex-fiancee’s name? That didn’t seem to be nothing to him, anyway. I still would love to know why Slade killed ProbablyKenton, and maybe even a little more information about what happened in the woods that Jesse saw, but that will have to wait until next epi! Two of exactly which have already dropped, so I will be catching up over the next few days.

I will say that I am enjoying the show, it’s engrossing, and so far the only part that’s not flowing for me is whenever Pru, Slade and Mark are pretending to be besties. Adding Danny to the mix seems to even it out, but those three musketeers ring false. I hope Ally’s character grows quickly as well. The cinematography is terrific, it’s a visually appealing show and thank BOB they’ve eased off on the loud, trippy flashbacks.

Cheers, until next time!