4.2 Some Conscience Lost It’s an episode exploring all kinds of displacement, from Reid’s inability to fit in well with the new operations of Lehman Street, the wanderings of Leda Starling, Susan’s hideaway, Rose’s tricksy relationship with adopted son Connor, through to the missing boys of the Union Workhouse. Each strand of the story follows a similar path as the person in question struggles in their present situation through a specific trial, before they find some kind of acceptance by the end. Some are perhaps more uneasy than others, but the various outcomes prove the new series’ commitment to strong character work. The structure of the episode is a little reminiscent of a Buffy episode, The Zeppo, in which Xander is followed by the audience, redundant in the main, barely-seen battle of the episode that involves the rest of the characters and muddling through his own mystery whilst dealing with his own feelings of inadequacy. In Some Conscience Lost, the murder that would usually form the main A-plot, that of the Salvation Army captain, is seen only in brief. Instead, we follow the displaced Reid, chancing upon a dying boy with Matilda (which in turn reminded me of Jo’s death in Dickens’ Bleak House) and finding him determined to solve the mystery of how this boy ran away from a seemingly ideal workhouse. Of course, the two cases turn out to have something of a connection and it’s Reid who pieces it all together, proving his instincts are still in place, even if he hasn’t learnt how to manage the system just yet. Using the background of the Salvation Army, its growth in the late nineteenth century and the opposition it faced from the Skeleton Army is perhaps one of the best uses of historical context the series has yet brought us. It’s simply woven into the story and the episode resists the urge to reel off a load of exposition to explain that antagonism, whereas in the past, a whole scene would usually have been devoted to describing it at length. Here, we see merely snippets of it, enough to sketch in the history required, using it as an underlying parallel to Cornelius Wilde’s obsession with the “deserving poor” and killing off the sick in order to balance his books. At the heart of it all is a desire to clean up Whitechapel, seemingly the locus of so much change in Victorian London, but the need to do it properly, without judgement, is the trap that Wilde falls into. The episode also takes the time to see Susan get used to her new surroundings in the docks, by working her way into the schemes of Croker and his business management. The scene in which she takes control of the negotiations with a little background knowledge and a whole lot of mettle is a great one. MyAnna Buring and David Threlfall have a nicely unsettling chemistry together and the shot of them both leaning in to offer their deal is neat way of establishing that new synchronicity between them. It also helps that you have two strong actors in one scene, as capable of commanding your attention with a look as they are with a deftly delivered speech. Read Becky’s review of the previous episode, The Stranger’s Home, here. This review was originally posted in January 2016.
