Gunpowder, episode 2, review: 'Torture simply proved the easiest mechanism for moving things forward'

After the gruesome extremes of last week’s opener Gunpowder, BBC One’s ultra-dark drama about the 1605 plot to blow up Parliament, eased off the torture throttle a little this week. But only a little.

Indeed one nightmare-inducing early scene in which two Spanish Jews were burned at the stake by the implacable Constable of Castile (Pedro Casablanc) seemed, if not entirely gratuitous (as many horrors were perpetrated in the name of Catholicism, as Protestantism, at the time) in its blood-curdling violence, then at the very least excessive.

For the most part, though, intensive candle-lit plotting and scheming replaced the air of bloodcurdling menace that hung so compellingly over the opening episode. Once again Game of Thrones star Kit Harington made a thoughtfully sympathetic Robert Catesby, ringleader of the persecuted English Catholics who plotted to blow assassinate King James I (Derek Riddell).

As Catesby’s chief oppressors, Mark Gatiss drew a little too directly from the spymaster-by-numbers manual for his twistedly Machiavellian Robert Cecil, though Shaun Dooley was a triumph of sustained threat as his thumbscrewer-in-chief Sir William Wade. As the game of conspiracy and treachery spread out through the grand courts, dim-lit taverns and seedy back alleys of London, Madrid and Brussels the plot maintained its grip. Even while broadly illustrating the scale and wider political context of the plot. If anything, it was the more personal moments, such as Catesby’s unconvincing confrontation with his priest (Peter Mullan), that fell flat.

In the end torture simply proved the easiest mechanism for moving events forward. The closing quarter ratcheted up (literally) the tension as Catesby led a rescue mission to the Tower to free a captured fellow conspirator and priest, Father Gerard (Robert Emms), before news of the plot could be racked right out of him by Wade. Much of the succeeding action was barely visible in the gloom and murk of a  chase through lightless tunnels and dungeons, but that didn’t stop it being utterly nailbiting.

We may all know the outcome, historically. But on the evidence you’d have to bet that won’t stop the finale of this admirably fierce drama being explosive, regardless.