For those of you who have read our reviews of previous Sinbad episodes, this may seem slightly repetitive but that is more a reflection on this latest episode.

Once again, there is a savage creature on the loose and once again, Sinbad and his friends are caught up in the middle of it. However, this time round, the intrepid sailor has moved on from giant snakes to face what is essentially a werewolf but is known as the fiend.  And to make matters worse, Gunnar has been arrested on suspicion of being the beast itself.

This is just another distraction for Sinbad who is already in the search for a map of the Land of the Dead, rumoured to be somewhere in a monastery on the island of Malta, which despite being an entire island, is implied to be little more than a tiny village community centred around the monastery and a tavern run by Philippe (a rather surprising guest star, Mathew Horne).

Horne is a lot of fun in all of his scenes and it is a shame the writers did not capitalise on his casting by writing more scenes for him. Then again, more scenes for Horne would have run the risk of him becoming the focus rather than the supporting role.

The focus this time round falls on Gunnar who up until now had not had much time devoted to his character. One thing we do learn about Gunnar is that it does not take much for him to fall in love. No sooner has he offloaded his delivery of silk does he find himself engaged in a rather poorly written love story with a recent widow named Lara, whose husband fell victim to the werewo…sorry, fiend.

This catches the eye of Father La Stressa (Dougray Scott), who we also learn gets jealous quite easily but fortunately for him, he is in a position to have Gunnar arrested and accused of being the fiend, but does allow Sinbad to try to find the real fiend to prove Gunnar’s innocence.

With Sinbad now having to divert his attention away from the map, Tiger is left to visit an old friend, Brother Angelico, who she believes knows the location of the map but before she is able to get a logical answer out of him, Taryn shows up to bump him off.

The fiend storyline is very quickly wrapped up with La Stressa winding up as dinner for the beast and the beast reverting back to his original form as Philippe, a twist that you presume was more obvious than it intended to be.

After being promised big things so long ago, we can only hope that next week’s finale is worth the wait – given the trailer, it looks as though it may well be.

Aired at 7pm on Sunday 16th September 2012 on Sky1.

> Order the Series 1 DVD on Amazon.

What did you think of the episode? Let us know below…