Hunted this week had an actual PLOT DEVELOPMENT. Albeit one that we knew about since Episode 3 at least. Aidan is the Byzantium mole boys and girls! And he might not even be called Aidan! Which is bound to pee his ex and pursed lipped heroine Sam off no end. She might have to beat some muscle-bound lug up in anger. Which happens quite a lot anyway.

At the very least Aidan’s outing adds some new momentum to what has been threatening to become an awfully long drawn out affair – just let Frank Turner have the bloody dam, so we can get Sam copying the opening scene of GoldenEye – but one fears it will only serve to tangle the web yet further. I mean, he may not even be Chief Mole for starters. What’s the betting he’s someone working for someone else who’s actually Aidan working against the someone else he’s meant to be working for? That’s Hunted for you (i.e. hunt the plot threads).

At least the mole isn’t Zoe as I feared and who continues to shine like a sunbeam through all the washed out colours used (is it just me or is the gloomy palette starting to get a little annoying now?) and Ian Cockney continues to annoy more and more. And why is an actor like Stephen Dillane continuing to be wasted here? Pops up in a cameo each episode, makes a terse comment, then goes again. You want Peter Firth or even Gordon Jackson’s ghost to come along and take charge of all this. They’d have it wrapped in five minutes flat.

Anyway, there are enough new tidbits thrown in this week to keep us hooked enough past all the frenetic action scenes – needle man might not be a baddie after all, at least not in with the Turners, as he saves Sam’s life (which keeps with him sparing her death by injection the other week) and then there’s the Hourglass painting, which could cleverly be the key to the whole thing in a construct worthy of the king of these things, Steven Moffat.

Next week: Meera Syal! Here’s hoping there’s a comedy musical number with the rest of the Goodness Gracious Me gang thrown in.

Aired at 9pm on Thursday 1 November 2012 on BBC One.

> Order Series 1 on DVD on Amazon.

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