Warning: this recap is for those who have watched episode two of Sherwood on BBC One.
The plot thickened with another shock murder and a rumoured “spycop”. Here’s your breakdown of the BBC drama’s second episode …
Shovel meant double trouble
Oh, Andy. What have you done? Tensions had been building between ambitious Tory councillor Sarah Vincent (Joanne Froggatt) and her new father-in-law Andy Fisher (Adeel Akhtar), who displayed a Labour poster in his window. When Andy’s son Neel (Bally Gill) proudly showed off his new sound system by linking up Andy’s phone via Bluetooth, you knew it was going to backfire. Lo and behold, lonely Andy watched late-night porn, which woke up Sarah by emanating from speakers next door. Excruciating. Andy wept with humiliation.
When he dropped round a parcel of garden tools for her the next day, Andy barged in on Sarah on the loo. He realised she was doing away with the adjoining gate between them – a father-son link that was meaningful to his late wife. When Sarah cruelly sneered that she had killed herself because she was “dying inside” – not just of cancer but figuratively, too – the red mist descended. Andy grabbed a box-fresh spade and lashed out. As blood pooled around Sarah’s head, it looked fatal.
It is a fictionalised version of the second murder in writer James Graham’s home town of Annesley Woodhouse in summer 2004. Just 11 days after the crossbow killing of ex-miner Keith Frogson, newlywed Chanel Taylor was shot in the kitchen by her father, Terry Rodgers. The crimes were unrelated, but brought another wave of police to the already reeling community. After a 17-day manhunt, Rodgers was found in the woods. Will Andy go to ground there too?
Arrows attacks intensified
We had first found Andy in his happy place, at the wheel of a Robin Hood Line train to Nottingham. At least, until his cabin window was shattered by an arrow, fired from 60 metres away before the archer fled back into the tree line. We saw fugitive Scott (Adam Hugill) striding through the forest, longbow in hand and quiver on his back, like an east Midlands remix of The Hunger Games.
Was Andy his target? It seemed unlikely. Well, until the next attack raised the possibility of a racial motivation. Local lawyer Vinay Chakarabarti (Ace Bhatti) narrowly avoided two arrows fired at him as he watered his garden.
Memories came back for detective duo
The murderer of Gary Jackson (Alun Armstrong) had been at large for 48 hours as we rejoined DCS Ian St Clair (David Morrissey) and the Met’s DI Kevin Salisbury (Robert Glenister), sent up to assist the investigation. His return to the region brought back memories of his lost local love Jenny and a blazing fire, presumably the fatal one Gary was accused of starting back in 1984. The wistful feel continued when he ran into Jenny (Nadine Marshall) in the supermarket and had a stilted catchup chat.
Forensics showed that, as well as the arrow in his chest, Gary had a skull wound, probably the result of a final blow by the crossbow’s butt. The burnt polythene bag found in his back yard incinerator carried traces of ketamine and the Sparrow family’s fingerprints. Signs pointed to the local crime clan …
‘We’re just a family taxi firm’
When St Clair’s squad raided the Sparrows’ farm, they denied handling class-As or having contact with Gary. Patriarch Mickey (Philip Jackson) accused police of a vendetta – even though they had just been covering their tracks by removing a van-load of dodgy TVs and dismantling the click farm run by son Rory (Perry Fitzpatrick). When younger brother Ronan (Bill Jones) mentioned Rory’s friendship with Scott – they practised archery and talked tech together – he bridled, before asking his sibling to give him an alibi for the night of the murder.
When arrows from their archery range matched the murder weapon, Mickey and Rory were arrested. It turned out that Gary and the Sparrows had adjacent allotments. He had nabbed a consignment of drugs from their shed and burnt it, giving the Sparrows motive for revenge. But they were still in custody when Chakarabarti was targeted, putting them in the clear. For now. Rory’s up to something shady, surely.
Sisters divided by death
Newly widowed Julie Jackson (Lesley Manville) spent the episode looking haunted and broken. She pored over family photos, smelled Gary’s National Union of Mineworkers tie and hit the daytime wine. A few doors away, her estranged sister Cathy (Claire Rushbrook) agonised over what to do and settled for dropping a sympathy card through the door. The incongruous rabbit illustration on the front was somehow heartbreaking.
Cathy and husband Fred Rowley (Kevin Doyle) had worries of their own, stressing about Scott’s whereabouts. He had missed his sentencing hearing for benefit fraud, so the magistrate had issued a warrant for his arrest. Cut to the woods, where Scott was burying his £15,000 savings – his father’s redundancy payoff from the pits – in carrier bags. It won’t earn much interest down there, mate.
Scott’s HQ was hardly reassuring
Salisbury suggested swabbing the mouth of Gary’s dog in case it had bitten his killer. The brainwave paid off when traces of Scott’s DNA were found. Good boy. After a police raid on the Rowleys’ house, recriminations began. Cathy was aghast that her stepson had murdered her brother-in-law. Fred insisted Scott’s targets couldn’t be connected to the miner’s strike. He wasn’t even born then and didn’t care, “spending all his time on computers”. Was he working for the Sparrows’ click farm? Had he been radicalised online? Had he somehow been investigating the so-called “spycop”? His hacking skills were rudimentary but he had been researching Gary and Chakarabarti (not Andy, it appeared).
When police raided Scott’s lock-up, they discovered a textbook conspiracy theorist’s lair. Newspaper cuttings on the walls bore headlines such as “They lied to us”, “Time for the truth” and “Were the government behind it all?”. Maps were marked with locations of the attacks. “You’re all liars” was spray-painted on the inside of the door. Nothing to see here, officer.
The spycop plot came into focus
Gary’s solicitor, Chakarabarti, admitted they were pursuing wrongful arrest claims from the 80s. His arson charge might have been dropped but Gary believed he had been blacklisted and driven out of his job, so wanted to know who had implicated him. Such campaigns had been gathering momentum since the inquest into the “Battle of Orgreave”, a violent 1984 clash between police and picketing miners. Salisbury also believed that his own intervention in the arson case had impeded his career.
His NUM sources had convinced Gary that there was a so-called “spycop” in their midst. Undercover officers had snooped on alleged radicals in the 60s and 70s, then fed back intel to Scotland Yard, the Home Office and security services. Had they also been deployed in 80s mining communities, assuming cover identities to gain the confidence of locals?
Word was that one such spy had been sent to Ashfield and might have singled out Gary as a militant. What’s more, they hadn’t left after the strike ended, remaining in the community to this day. Was this related to the secrecy around Gary’s redacted arrest file? Was it one of his fellow arsonists? Mistrust suddenly seemed everywhere.
Line of the week
“What the hell does that mean?” “I don’t know but it’s not good.” St Clair and phlegmatic sidekick DS Cleaver (Terence Maynard) ponder that garage graffiti.
Notes and observations
James Graham has deliberately included scenes of characters talking over one another – Jackie and Cathy in the first episode, Ian and Kevin here. Counterpoint dialogue adds naturalism but isn’t often seen on TV because it causes issues with sound recording, editing and subtitling.
What’s the deal with St Clair’s briefly glimpsed brother Martin (played by Corrie’s Mark Frost)? He seems a sore point. More to come there, I’ll wager.
A shout-out to director Lewis Arnold’s beautiful cutaways to the Nottinghamshire countryside. They provide moments of calm amid the broiling drama.
Rejoin us next Monday as the series reaches its midway mark. In the meantime, please leave your thoughts and theories below …
