Luther series 5, episode 2, review: The return of Alice Morgan

Ruth Wilson returns as the previously presumed dead Alice in this ridiculous but strangely compelling series

And so there she is, slumped against John Luther’s front door – Alice Morgan (Ruth Wilson). “Wotcha!” she greets Luther in a discordantly plummy accent. “Don’t pretend you’re not pleased to see me.”

Considering Idris Elba’s detective has spent most of the past three series brooding about Alice, that would seem to be a given. He’s soon throwing her on to his double bed – but not for reasons we might have expected. Alice has been on the receiving end of George Cornelius’s pump-action shotgun at the swimming baths (ah, so it was her), and Luther is picking bits of shot out of her flank.

Until now, Alice was presumed drowned in the River Scheldt, and Luther fans hadn’t known of any connection between her and Cornelius. A flashback to Antwerp, and some sort of deal between and Wilson and Patrick Malahide’s characters involving uncut gems, provides some explanation. At the crucial moment, the handover was hijacked by four heavies – musclebound goons soon dispatched in short order by Alice, using her trusty hat pin.

In case anyone was still in doubt, Luther and Alice have more in common with superheroes than real people, and the show itself is as enjoyably ludicrous as any of the Marvel/DC Comics adaptations. Given Ruth Wilson’s availability after she abruptly ended her stint at the Mohawk beach shack in The Affair, you can sense Neil Cross shoe-horning Alice back into the plot – though in fact, she fits rather neatly. First, however, they have to escape Luther’s flat, because Cornelius is waiting outside with at least seven heavies this time – after Antwerp, he’s taking no chances.

Needless to say, the dynamic duo do manage to flee via a fire escape, making their way to Alice’s parents’ old house – aka the scene of the double parricide for which Alice has yet to face justice. “It was such an anticlimax I almost wish I hadn’t done it,” she admits to Luther (a serving police officer, let us not forget, although he often seems to) after some verbal foreplay about the observable universe getting bigger. That’s sociopathic polymaths for you. Oh, and by the way, Cornelius’s kidnapped son is chained up in Alice’s childhood bedroom. “Funny that,” she drily observes, “because I was never allowed boys in here.”

Elsewhere, we learn that Luther and Alice did indeed consummate their wonky relationship, in that Sussex beach-top hideaway from series three. Luther is now harbouring doubts about the wisdom of shacking up with an active psychopath, and Alice isn’t taking rejection very well. This is one woman it would be unwise to scorn, although it’s Cornelius’s son who bears the brunt of Alice’s decision to pursue “option two” – that’s to say to kill Cornelius and be done with the remorseless old gangster.

But what about the other serial killing that Luther is supposed to be investigating with his new rookie partner, DS Halliday (Wunmi Mosaku)? Although the killer appears to have provided a convenient conclusion to the case by slitting his own throat, Halliday has doubts that the man on the heath was the real culprit – doubts confirmed (to us at least) when we’re reunited with supercilious psychoanalyst Vivien Lake (Hermione Norris doing her reliable ice maiden bit) and her nutjob husband Jeremy, a heart surgeon with impulse control issues.

Despite promising to behave himself in future, Jezza is, in fact, dreaming up new and lurid ways of killing women, including one of his patients. Two more episodes to go and we’re set up for a humdinger of a conclusion. Ridiculous but strangely compelling. Welcome back, Alice.