Les Misérables, episode 3 review: how much more misery can we take? At least Olivia Colman is having fun

How much more miserabilism can we stomach? We’re halfway through Les Misérables (BBC One) and Victor Hugo’s sadistic assaults on his characters are already so remorseless that another three hours may have us all following Jean Valjean (Dominic West) into a nunnery to seek blessed peace.

The demise of Fantine (Lily Collins) was quite the sweatiest and most wrenching deathbed scene since Lady Sybil expired in Downton Abbey. With miraculous help from the make-up department, Collins mutated into a post-punk alabaster ghoul. Even Inspector Javert (David Oyelowo) lowered his weapon.

Then there was the self-sacrifice of Valjean, whose arrest rather put the kibosh on his pledge to seek out young Cosette (Lia Giovanelli).

It was with some  relief that two years on he was able to saunter back into the story and, with unexplained funds, buy her out of a life of brazen cruelty that made Dickens’s Dotheboys Hall look like a five-star health farm.

As the villainous Thénardiers, Olivia Colman and Adeel Akhtar are having lashings of fun. It was a pleasure to see them suffer at the hands of both Valjean and Javert, who at least have this one thing in common. Like many a noxious smell, the Thénardiers may require further disinfectant.

The pursuit of Valjean by Javert veers between implacable and unwatchable. Such was the headlong urgency of their moral duel that Andrew Davies’s script devoted the entire episode to it, with the result that the Pontmercy plot strand is now officially missing in action.

Without cribbing from Hugo, who has acres of room to go into such things, it’s hard to put a finger on why Javert has such a specific beef about a man who pinched a coin. Perhaps it is the repressed felon in himself he hinted at in the opener.

Whatever, Valjean’s rescue of Cosette was always too good to be true. Nosy neighbours (as succulently played by Anna Calder-Marshall) have only one function in such plots as this. Thanks be to Georgie Glen for the crystal-pure glare of the mother superior as she risked damnation by lying through her teeth. A riveting escape. Next week, more fresh hell.