Survivors 9 - Law and Order

This was really harrowing, and if anything, the fact that I'd accidentally spoilered myself on the identity of the culprit made it seem all the more grimly inevitable.

No dating question with this ep, because there's a May Day party. After which Tom Price drunkenly rapes and kills Wendy, and puts Barney in the frame, just as I'd read. But I wasn't expecting the trial which the community then conduct to be so tense and gripping. And it comes in three acts - verdict, sentence and execution.

The worst thing about it is that killing Barney is exactly what they would have done, and it's exactly what we would do too in their place. There's no way out of it - no-one gets to walk away from this Omelas.

And it's not over even then - Price confesses to Abby and Greg, and they realise they have to keep quiet about it, because they need him. Just imagine it. Not only are you living in a post-apocalyptic world, but you've trapped yourself in an appalling moral compromise.

Then when it finishes, I exit the media player and the BBC News Channel comes back on with a revised coronavirus death toll of 422. Just for fifty minutes I'd forgotten all about it.

This is the best episode, outside the opening 4, by a country mile so far.