Sherwood review: A gripping series returns, with more fury, more intent and more horror than before

The first series traced the old enmities and grudges which arose from the miners' strike of the 1980s, specifically in Nottinghamshire, where there was a bitter divide between those pit workers who wanted to get back to the pits, and those who wanted to maintain solidarity with colleagues across the country.

It had crossbow killings, a shovel to the head and a police shooting, but this new series moves things up a notch with the introduction of the gangster family the Bransons.

Writer James Graham – born and brought up in the Nottinghamshire minefields – widens the action from the pit village of the first series to the introduce the mean streets of Nottingham itself.

And the story moves on from the miners' strike and its faultlines to the aftermath – the job losses, the end of industry and the crime and the gangs which arose to fill the vacuum.

Enter the Bransons – patriarch Roy (Stephen Dillane), his wife Anne (Monica Dolan) and son Nicky (Sam Buchanan).

Their gangland activities may have calmed down somewhat as Roy and Anne 'mellowed' over the years, but they still abide by a gangland code, which means that when a shocking tragedy hits the family they are “of the view that we'll have to do summat oursens”.

Dillane and Dolan, as Roy and Anne, look at first glance like they might be a fun gran and grandad – but they carry such an air of menace that every time they're on screen you feel like something awful is about to happen, even as they offer to help pluck a chicken.

And, of course, something awful does happen. The Bransons take the law into their own hands in a genuinely shocking sequence lended added horror by the seemingly casual way they go about it.

More innocent people are dragged into their schemes, and the carnage trickles down, affecting the lives of more and more characters.

This being Sherwood, however, perhaps no one is truly innocent. Secrets are kept, long-forgotten crimes resurface, guilt can be passed through on association.

Graham uses this framework of the crime drama to on which to hang wider points about a society let down by successive governments in the wake of the destruction of the pits.

There's the previous Government's half-hearted attempt to buy votes by dangling the carrot of mining's return to the region; business sensing an opportunity, in which the people take a back seat; the apparent futility of attempts to end the cycle of violence with 'multi-agency approaches'.

Some of this can be a heavy-handed, but there is such an intense fury running through Sherwood that it carries you along.

You can't help nodding when a youth club worker tells former copper Ian St Clair (David Morrissey) that: “It's a mad system, that instead of investing early on, you spend 20 times that locking them up later.”

St Clair has left the force after the events of series one, and now runs an anti-violence task force. Apparently enthused by his new role, you can't help but feeling it's a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

But it's it not the polemic that gets you with Sherwood, it's the performances. As well as the sinisterly compelling Dillane and Dolan, the breakout star of the first two episodes are dominated by Oliver Huntingdon as Ryan Bottomley.

Apparently a good kid, Ryan has been corrupted by drugs and violence. A hulking figure in a dirty shellsuit, Huntingdon is all fury, aggression and hate which he can barely contain and while it's a fairly showy role, you can't take your eyes off him.

It's the same with the show as a whole, once you can look at the screen again.