Friedrich the Nazi-hunter’s got Curtis’ old timey-wimey power, he’s got a knife, and he’s got a plan: let’s kill Hitler. What could possibly go wrong?

A lot, actually. The Fuhrer’s clearly been working out and Friedrich’s plan goes awry in a Ray Bradbury sort of way. In the blink of an eye the timeline is skewed, Friedrich is skewered, and suddenly present day UK is a Nazi-ruled state. It’s a beautifully atmospheric, almost filmic, rapid sequence of events and, as the gravity of one man’s actions becomes apparent to us, Kelly pretty neatly sums up the whole episode: “Fucking Nazis.”

This is what we’ve been waiting for ever since we saw old Friedrich getting powered-up last Christmas. It’s Misfits at its most brazenly, balls-to-the-wall, brilliant. A hybrid of Inglorious Basterds, V for Vendetta, and the Mirror-Universe episodes of Star Trek, it has all that darkness and unexpectedness (even if you guessed it was going to happen, Curtis’ brutal execution still makes you flinch), but stays true to the characters we know, even though they’re in entirely different circumstances. Simon is still kind, Kelly has no respect for authority, and our misfits are still all misfits, just against a different kind of society.

The Nazis efforts to use and then eradicate those with abilities result in a grimly familiar campaign; people hiding under floorboards, raids on homes, innocent people being ‘taken away’. It’s a modern day setting but it’s written with the claustrophobia and constant worry that we’ve seen in a hundred depictions of Nazi-occupied countries in film and TV over the years.

Full marks also to the cinematographers and designers for managing to make the already grim council estate look even more despairing than ever. The sight of the concrete youth centre swathed in swastikas is one of the most dystopian sights you’re likely to see on telly for a while.

As if we didn’t already know these modern Nazis were evil, Glen Speers proves it to us as the (literally) chilling Nazi captain and the face of an otherwise faceless regime. Every sentence crackling with malice; he’s your classic ‘boo-hiss!’ Nazi commandant. It’d be interesting to see what his character is like in the true timeline. Hopefully one day we will – Speers does dead-eyed evil very well indeed. In counterpoint to him is Shaun (Craig Parkinson), taking as much pride and joy in his role as an officer as he does a support worker, and displaying all the competency of ‘Allo ‘Allo!‘s Herr Flick.

But this is Kelly’s episode and Lauren Socha shines. She’s rapidly becoming the stand-out character of Series 3 (sorry Rudy), and her romance with Seth is adding some lovely depth. Her rescue of him from prison is not only a superb action sequence, but it proves that there’s more to her than simply a big mouth. Using a coke can as a fake grenade? Genius.

So is the eventual time fix, which is quick and easy but doesn’t feel like a cheap reset button. It’s a perfectly logical piece of writing and, most importantly, hilarious.

This is time-travel, drama, and Misfits, at its best. After all, it’s not every day you get to kick the shit out of Hitler.

Aired at 10pm on Sunday 20th November 2011 on E4.

> Buy the Series 1-2 boxset on Amazon.

> Order the Series 3 DVD on Amazon.

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