It's a season that's packed full of surprises in both well-executed action sequences and in narrative, proving that there's considerable freshness left in the show as it moves forward.

Despite dragging City Hall into the fray, it’s still about as divorced from reality as a British crime series can get: a ridiculously action-focused maximalist melodrama. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Between the jolts of carnage it can be hard to keep all the motivations straight across eight episodes, especially if your memories of what everyone was up to in the first season – which debuted in 2020 – are hazy. So it is unlikely to win over anyone who has found its previous glamorisation of theatrical gangsters and extreme violence distasteful. Yet in full flight Gangs of London can still be nerve-shredding TV.

The high-octane series starts at a million miles per hour but flags towards the end of its eight episodes. Betrayals and double-crossings grow repetitive. Flashbacks become confusing. Characters are constantly ordering hits on one another and placing bounty on rivals’ heads. The ending is underwhelming.

Slick as its production values are and despite the quality of some of the performances, the violence is all becoming quite exhausting. .... After a while all these deaths become meaningless, desensitising and therefore pointless. They stop registering.