It was really encouraging for a second series of anything to be at least as good as the first but this was certainly the case with this series. The main character, Detective Harry Ambrose returns to his home town to assist in a grimly bizarre case of a child poisoning their (apparent) parents.
As with the first series, the story is richly detailed and unfolds with impeccable structure and accompanying tension. We learn much about Ambrose’s life, of which there were hints in the first series, and the rather cliched idea of a character returning to their home town after a long absence and their hidden traumas coming to the surface, is really well and involvingly used here. It is also very well tied in with the plot and the remarkable character of Vera who starts almost as a cartoon-like villain but who, in the course of the investigation, is revealed to be a much more sympathetic and intriguing character. Her psychotherapy sessions when applied to Ambrose are remarkably effective and helpful (even if he does not immediately see them as that) - and the similarities between them are most intriguing so that by the end our view of Vera is very different from what it was at the start (or at least mine were) She is by no means an unambiguously heroic or admirable character (far from it in fact) but the script does her the justice of taking her seriously and exploring her life and traumas.
The performance of the child actor who is central to the story was remarkably fine in conveying trauma in way that was not cheaply lurid and sensational.
The other elements of the story - in particular his relationship with the newly appointed young detective in town and all her early life events - was very well shown and the richness of the characters and how the various elements all, convincingly, came together was one oft eh greatest strengths of this series. Too often such shows try too hard to keep on adding layers of meaning and significance, but here the balance was just right - and it was gradually built up as the events unfolded.
I have high hopes of the third series…