Hard Sun, episode four, recap: Agyness Deyn is the best thing about this barmy end of the world thriller

Is Hard Sun in danger of burning up before re-entry? A crescendo of silliness attended episode four of Neil Cross’s already thoroughly barmy end of the world thriller. It was fast-moving and unpredictable but in ways that made fast-moving and unpredictable feel like fundamentally terrible ideas. 

The good news is that annoying Old Testament-referencing serial killer Thomas Blackwood (Richard Coyle) has been apparently foiled. Alas not before Coyle hosed down the screen with his bug-eyed over-acting – he splashed petrol over that car-and-barber combo like Daniel Day-Lewis hammering nails into a boot back in his cobbler days. 

The bad news is that, if Blackwood is out of the picture, it’s not entirely clear what’s left in the way of gripping story or characters to cheer / boo or vaguely care about. Everybody is so miserable that, even were they party to the closely-guarded secret of humanity’s imminent snuffing-out, it’s hard to see how it would make them any glummer. Here are the rest of the week’s talking points. 

1: Is that the end of the serial killer plot? 

He came, he saw, he spouted Old Testament gibberish while waggling a scimitar. Such would appear the long and the short of the Thomas Blackwood affair. Introduced in episode three scaring the bejaysus out of Father Dennis (Dermot Crowley) in the confession box, Blackwood proceeded to communicate his apocalyptic message – the world is ending, we’re all terrible people – via disgraced journalist Will Benedetti (Ukweli Roach) and then set alight that barber outside his shop. 

This was all by way of build-up to his final flourish in which Blackwood tracked down Dennis to his church, waved his scimitar a bit more and then cackled as the priest flipped out and punched his bête noire repeatedly.

Dennis having earlier tried to clear the room by attacking his well-wishers as smug hypocrites. Thomas appeared to regard this as final confirmation that everyone – even under-employed Father Ted extras – are sinners at heart. As he was led away by the police it was with the distinct sense his piece in this fandango was at a close.

So far, so silly. More positively, Cross remains a master of atmosphere. Luther, his previous hit, was at its most endearing when it just consisted of Idris Elba grimly stomping around in an enormous flapping overcoat. 

Hard Sun is similarly best appreciated as a runaway freight-train of doom and gloom. It certainly does an effective job transposing to contemporary London the end-of-days feverishness of Nineties David Fincher. The most unsettling moment in the entire episode, for instance, was a brief exchange between killer Blackwood and a charity fundraiser. 

“So you’re a cancer whore,” he observed, revelling in the slow ripple of horror across her face. Whatever about the nonsensical plot, a little sneaking regard is surely due a series that can turn a random encounter with a chugger into an apocalyptic meditation on the futility of existence. 

2: Is Charlie Hicks the most boring bad cop ever? 

Jim Sturgess has, to his credit, given the scenery a thorough chewing as hipster-bearded anti-hero detective Charlie Hicks. Sadly, he’s let down by the wonky script. Do we really care, for instance, that he’s in cahoots with MI5 evil person Morrigan (Nikki Amuka-Bird)? Their alliance feels like something scribbled on a white-board in the writers’s room, lacking the character development to make it plausible. 

The instalment ended with the conspiratorial duo anonymously furnishing detective Elaine Renko’s trouble son, Daniel (Jojo Macari), with devastating intelligence regarding his parentage. But what was presumably intended as an explosive twist felt like just another convulsion to string us along while Cross works out how to translate his grand conceit – OMG, the sun’s going to explode! – into a meaningful story.

3: What will Daniel do with the information regarding his father? 

This could get awkward. Renko (Agyness Deyn) had previously revealed to her juvenile delinquent offspring that she had fallen pregnant during a rape. But the picture was complicated as Hicks, at the behest of the M15 conspirators trying to destroy his colleague, tunnelled deeper. Renko, we learned, had lied 20 years previously to get off the hook the English teacher who’d allegedly assaulted her. If Noah Underhill had violently abused her, why would she help him evade justice?

The implication is that, far from the result of a random attack, Daniel was the product of a pupil-teacher relationship gone wrong. Not that this nuance was cutting much ice with the boy who, after miraculously recovering from shredding his wrists the previous week, was last seen heading into the night, hoodie worn at a menacing angle. 

He obviously means to inflict grievous harm upon his dad. It is also safe to assume things won’t work out as planned for him or Renko, and that, either way, everyone will behave in a bonkers fashion as is the tradition on Hard Sun. 

4: Is there more to the relationship between Hicks and his partner’s widow than meets the eye? 

The higher-ups at the precinct are convinced Hicks was involved in the death of partner Butler. And they’re leaning on Renko to dig the necessary dirt. If she doesn’t uncover concrete evidence of his guilt (or innocence, but guilt is preferable) then it’s off to maximum security for Daniel.

Because she’s a smart lady cop, Renko senses that Butler’s tight-lipped widow Mari (Aisling Bea) knows more than she is letting on. If Hicks didn’t kill Butler he must be lying to protect “someone he loves”.

This is surely a hint that the relationship between Mari and Hicks went beyond collegiate. Confronted at a shopping mall by Agyness Deyn and that weird nose groove they’ve given her, most of us would probably have broken down on the spot. But Mari doesn’t appear inclined to crack and denied any insider knowledge (“there’s nothing”). Perhaps she’ll turn out to be a serial killer next week and dash about waving a machete. Four hours into Black Sun, very little can be ruled out on the grounds of implausibility. 

5: How convenient a copy-cat killer should strike just as Renko and Hicks were trying to lure the real sociopath into the open 

Every good thriller knows when to cheat. Luther wasn’t above the occasional contrivance and everybody loved it. But Hard Sun is now taking the entire box of digestives. As Father Dennis waited for Blackwood in that hippy-dippy church – his location leaked by Benedetti –  a second masked knife-wielder announced himself across town. Not only was he kitted out in a dead ringer of Blackwood’s burlap mask – he was likewise obsessed with the end of the world and had a history of paranoid obsession. 

Stabbed trying to kill a couple in a tower-block, his death, so far as the antiterrorism squad was concerned, closed the case. But wily DS Mooney (Adrian Rawlins) wasn’t convinced – there was no proven connection to Father Dennis for one thing – and called Hicks with his misgivings. He was a bit tardy, as it turned out, as Blackwood had joined the well wishers descending on the chapel as a demonstration of solidarity. Oooh, with your sleights of hand you do confound us, Hard Sun.

6: Are we supposed to identify with Hicks or loathe him? 

A geezer’s geezer, the detective inspector has huffed through the series looking perpetually fed-up. Coyle appears quite attached to the character and has taken what is probably the smartest option in portraying Hicks as an everyman who could do with a break. Even as kidnapped and threatened to waterboard Father Dennis – who, citing the sanctity of the confessional, was refusing to cough up Blackwood’s identity – it was with an air of amiable exasperation. In his position, who amongst us wouldn’t resort to light torture? We would certainly have gone along with the priest’s proposal that his location be leaked so that he could serve as live bait for Blackwood. 

Yet at the same time, Hicks has stooped to rather nefarious depths. It’s entirely possible he was carrying on with his best mate’s wife. And he’s about to cause Renko untold heartache by leaking to her son the name and address of Daniel’s father (having come by the details via a break-in). Pushing the cheeky-chappy envelope a bit, isn’t it?

7: Is Agyness Deyn the best thing about Hard Sun?

Renko spent most of the hour mucking about in the shadows to no great purpose. Deyn has done well getting beneath the skin of a two dimensional Troubled Lady Cop. But you wish Cross would allow her to occasionally relax and leave in some chinks of light. Everybody on Hard Sun could do with some humanising but the perpetually frowning Renko is especially in need of a layer or 10 of nuance.

She and Hicks were becoming entangled in the dullest ever game of mutual subterfuge. He’s trying to get his paws on her memory stick, with its explosive info regarding the end of the world five years hence. Renko, meanwhile, has been dragooned by the police department into proving that Hicks was involved in the death of his partner. He may or may not be guilty. The difficulty is that Hicks is such a wasteland of charisma it’s hard to see how establishing his culpability could make us like him any less. 

Prior to Hard Sun, Deyn was best known as one of those supermodels whose public persona suggested she considered being a supermodel inherently silly. She has acted extensively but this is arguably her highest profile role. It’s an impressive baptism, despite the overcooked material. Deyn has convincingly communicated fear, loathing and repression, maintaining her poise as the plot has banked from turgid to incomprehensible. Barring Naomi Campbell turning up in a remake of Seven, she claims the prize for best starring turn in a grisly Biblical thriller by former catwalk power-player. 

8: The world is still ending, right?

Hard Sun is described by the BBC as a “pre-apocalyptic” crime show. So why has everyone forgotten about the apocalypse? With the earth’s imminent (ish) demise established as fact, the series has gone to inordinate lengths to pad out the storyline with extraneous conspiracy thriller and serial killer garnishing. Don’t know about the rest of you but armageddon tired of all of piffing about.