The Devil’s Hour Series 2

Loop Dreams

The Devil’s Hour Series 2
Directed by various
UK October 2024
Five Episodes

Warning: Very light spoilers for series one.

Okay, so when I reviewed the excellent first series of The Devil’s Hour (right here) I rightly praised it but was forced to conclude that it’s a bit of a one trick pony in terms of any future iterations. But, just to prove me wrong (and they really did), here comes Series Two. I wasn’t expecting much from it after the conclusion of the first series but, I certainly got more than enough here to keep me happy. This second season is easily the equal of the first... although it’s one episode shorter than the 2022 season.

One thing which I’m very happy about is that, after hearing a short interview with the main co-star Peter Capaldi (who plays the serial killer but on the side of righteousness, as far as we know) is that the story arc obviously has a very clear beginning, middle and end because the second and third seasons have been shot back to back and the third series will definitely be the final one (although I suspect it won’t actually get a release until October 2025 or 2026).

All the cast return here, including Capaldi as Gideon, the always brilliant Jessica Raine as Lucy (in at least two different iterations of her character and their respective occupations), Nikesh Patel as Ravi (who is a detective in both of his ‘versions’, so to speak), Benjamin Chivers as Isaac and Meera Syal as Isaac’s psychiatrist. They’re all absolutely fantastic in this, as are all their co-stars.

This one starts off with the Detective version of Lucy we were introduced to right at the end of the last series... we see her life post-Gideon and, I think (it gets confusing at first), we find that the future version of her character is the one who is talking to the ‘far future’ version of Gideon in this particular multiversal loop, which we saw towards the end of the last season. It all points to this second version of Lucy we know as living a life taking place before the main Lucy of last season... because when she dies, Gideon has her blessing to ‘wake her up’ in the next life (if I’ve got this correctly), which is what the first series was all about, it turns out.

The show continues after this following both Detective Lucy and the later (or previous, depending on your point of view) iteration of Lucy after the events of the first six episodes, crosscutting between the two and also the various versions of the other actors’ characters in their respective versions of their reality. Where this one gets interesting is that Gideon seems to be building, possibly by accident, a network of people who seem to be ‘awoken’ (sometimes tragically so) to their plight in the universe. This could possibly be a small group utilised in future loops of themselves, I suspect.

So the focus on this one is the explosion in the toy shop which kills so many children... primarily to find the identity of the bomber in the yellow hoodie. Now, we’ve not been shown his/her face as yet but it kind of seems obvious to me just who this person must be and, maybe it’s a bit obvious from the start (although I’m still hoping series three will be able to surprise me on that score... fingers crossed).
 
A couple of things of note though... they’re still hiding people in the background of shots on occasion. There’s a brilliant moment in the early stages of the second episode here where Lucy and Isaac are with their psychiatrist and, in one long shot only, another version of Isaac peeking out at them from behind the curtains is clearly visible in a ‘blink and you’ll miss him’ appearance. And it’s not just things like this which keep me watching because the show is just so gripping on its own but, heck, this is pretty good icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned.

Two minor gripes though... and they really are minor.

We still don’t know why the show is called The Devil’s Hour. The waking up at 3.33am is still a feature for at least one of the characters but there’s no significance attached to this at any point, it seems to me.

Secondly, when one of the Lucy characters is going through a lot of pregnancy test kits over a ‘time passing’ montage, we see her throwing each dud into her bathroom bin as each negative result comes to light. Alas, the dud kits are piling up on top of each other in the bin to suggest the passage of time but... yeah, honestly that’s ridiculous. I mean, I know, visual shorthand and all that but are they really expecting us to believe that this woman doesn’t ever empty her bin over a number of months? Or even let other rubbish pile up on top of it?

Other than that though... I was gripped and thrilled and, asides from feeling smug at least about the identity of the yellow jacketed bomber (to an extent), The Devil’s Hour continues to surprise me, certainly with the twists the story takes but, not least of all in that it actually manages to hold its own with the previous series. I’m absolutely, once again, flagging this show up as one to watch and... I just hope there’s a Blu Ray version coming up at some point down the line.*

*Got sick of waiting to show this one to my folks so I just ordered a ‘Korean Blu Ray’ of the first two.