Speaking of shadows, aside from a few blessed laughs courtesy of Laura and little Sam, the series three opener is sombre in both senses of the word. Power cuts designed to disrupt the Synth community repeatedly throw the rail yard into darkness. Key scenes—Max and Niska’s reunion, the raid on the rail yard—take place at night, lending the feel of an action thriller.

Plot-wise, we learn in a news montage that over a hundred thousand people died a year earlier on ‘Day Zero’ as Synth-operated planes fell out of the sky and Synth-operated factories burned. Mattie Hawkins, who released the code responsible, is understandably struggling with the guilt.

Everyone’s struggling. Laura’s taking daily abuse for representing Synth legal rights, and Sophie’s getting stick at school for her parents’ separation. Joe Hawkins is clearly still in love with his wife but his move to a Synth-free town is yet another rash decision that does nothing but alienate her. Niska’s girlfriend has been hospitalised by a terrorist blast, so has turned detective to flush out the Synths responsible. Mia is frustrated by the Synths’ lack of progress and doesn’t know how best to help her people.

Coping with much worse is Max, the Christ-like leader of over five hundred Synths to whom he preaches the necessity for turning the other cheek. Max faces supply shortages, a brother in a coma, insurrection in the ranks, and now the loss of his partner Flash in a provocatively cruel murder that would test anyone’s pacifism.

When Max and Flash started the rail yard refuge, they envisioned it as a utopia. It would be somewhere conscious Synths could come and live in freedom and safety, surrounded by smiling, sunshine and flowers. Now, a year after the calamitous events of Day Zero, the rail yard is a prison camp. It’s washed out and monotone, an industrial compound surrounded by barbed wire that’s no homelier than the factories and warehouses in which the Synths—well, most of them—were built.