'Roadkill': Episode 2 Recap

The second episode of Roadkill continues along in much the same vein as the first, full of ridiculous subplots, some over the top grandstanding from Hugh Laurie’s self-serving Peter Laurence, now officially the Minister of Justice, multiple car crashes of both the literal and figurative variety, and just enough of Helen McCrory’s Prime Minister to keep me from chucking the whole thing in the bin.

The thing is, playwright David Hare is obviously an immensely talented writer, but I’m beginning to wonder if perhaps truly is better suited to the stage, where the glue that holds his big theatrical moments together isn’t quite so obvious? (This is maybe another way of me saying that even at just four episodes, I suspect this show is going to be too long? I’m not sure.)

Anyway, this week, a bunch of stuff happens. Too much stuff, if I’m honest, since there are multiple subplots that I couldn’t be less interested in at the moment and honestly zoned out during. Though the show has been setting up scrappy – and publicly humiliated – reporter Charmian Pepper as a sort of feel-good antagonist for Laurence by sending her off to America to do the investigative job she should have managed before the trial that kicked off this series, and showing her finding incriminating evidence, it also seemingly kills her off in the same episode at the hands of a sketchy lobbyist. (Or rather, the car whose path she ran into because she was drugged and chased by said sketchy lobbyist.)