Dreadful, dreadful news, gentle reader. One of Psychoville‘s most well-drawn and loveable characters is dead. It’s an eerie coincidence that one commenter at the foot of last week’s review wrote, “They wouldn’t kill Lomax… would they?” But they have. And as if the abrupt, bloody killings of Joy and Robert weren’t jarring enough, this week we have the shattering demise of poor Oscar Lomax to contend with, a traumatic moment whose shadow loomed large over the entire episode. But let me rewind a little. Elsewhere in the episode, all kinds of new strange details have come to light. Mr Jelly’s still pretending to be the late entertainer, Mr Jolly, which leads him to a posh country estate and straight into the middle of an illicit organ trafficking operation. It turns out that Mr Jolly had a sideline as a dodgy surgeon, a role Mr Jelly is ill equipped to fill. Does this plot strand have something to do with the mysterious Mr Mansour of Andrews Nanotech, whom Grace was seen talking to at the beginning of the episode? “I’ve been thinking a lot about committing the perfect murder,” he says. “I have a great aunt who has a will that could leave me debt free for the first time since the credit crunch.” David reluctantly agrees to the crime, but asks that, in return, Simon finds a way of ending the suffering of the former’s terminally ill mother, Maureen. “Criss cross,” David says, ominously. Librarian Jeremy Goode, spurred on by the Lynchian gesticulations of the Silent Singer, is still in hot pursuit of his missing book. The scene in which he menaces a young girl with his talk of the Jabberwocky is inarguably the funniest in the episode. “Jabberwocky would like to read that book, Chloe,” he says grimly, with eerie light reflected in his glasses. “Would you like me to send him to your room to look for it?” For sheer comic delight, a brief yet joyous scene in a toyshop called Hoyti Toyti comes a close second, with Jason Watkins’ performance as its softly spoken proprietor a genuine highlight. And then we come to the most unexpectedly sad strand of the entire episode. Oscar Lomax, we learn, is none other than Tony Hancock himself. But just as we’ve adjusted to the sight of a more clean-cut Oscar, wearing the trademark hat and coat from Hancock’s Half-Hour, along comes the evil detective, posing as Oscar’s estranged son, Billy, and hangs him. It’s a moment where the black humour that has defined the series briefly evaporates, leaving an unusually affecting, even upsetting air in its place. If you’ve become as invested in the character of Oscar as I have, it will surely rank as the most hard hitting in any episode of Psychoville yet. Horrid though it is, the death of Lomax does communicate an important message: that irrespective of their prominence in earlier episodes, no character is safe from the presence of the dark detective, or the ruthlessness of writers Shearsmith and Pemberton. Psychoville airs on BBC Two, Thursdays at 10pm.
