And so we come to the final episode of Cucumber: the one which, following the events of Episode 7, didn’t seem strictly necessary. Was it worth it? No, but we’ll come to that later. Before that, there is the matter of Henry’s attempts at social engineering, and the fact that – having clearly read too … >

In this penultimate episode of Cucumber, Russell T Davies doesn’t give us what we expect. There’s no knock at the door for Henry or Marie – no sudden, shocked bewilderment at news only half-comprehended. Instead, the action begins on the day of Lance’s funeral and we follow Henry going through the motions of thanking guests … >

Well, you can’t say we weren’t warned. In the opening sequence of this episode, the caption clearly reads, ‘Lance Edward Sullivan, 1966 – 2015’. There was the possibility that this could have been a piece of Russell T Davies misdirection, in the spirit of Rose Tyler’s ‘This is the story of how I died’. But … >

‘I hate gay men,’ said Henry (Vincent Franklin) in Cucumber’s opening episode last month. ‘It’s all ‘Hi!’ and ‘Oh my God! Look at you!’’ It was the kind of comment that was all whipped cream with knives: the kind of frothy acerbity which – following on from a titillatingly phallic opening sequence – wolfishly opened … >

Finally, after years spent traversing the space-time vortex, Russell T Davies gets to write a scene of two men, sat at a table, talking about relationships. As Henry (Vincent Franklin) opens up to newcomer Leigh (Phaldut Sharma) about his fears of sex and fears of men, the character visibly softens, beginning the journey perhaps towards … >

Say what you like about Russell T Davies as a writer, he doesn’t crave anyone’s approval. Tackling the unsettling topic of teacher-pupil grooming this week, Davies eschews sermonising – and avoids Queer as Folk territory – by showing the retrospective consequences of such an affair. A game of sexual cat and mouse is played between … >