Red Riding 1980 on C4

It's funny how good hygiene is as an indicator of character. Hygiene and good taste. You can spot the real villains of Red Riding 1980 a mile off, because one of them fails to employ good hygiene, while the other has rather poor taste in humour.
Even with the cold, distant performance of Joseph Mawle as the Yorkshire Ripper, I can't help thinking the bad guy is Bob Craven (Sean Harris), a Detective who doesn't wash his hands after using a urinal. Okay, so he manages not to touch Paddy Considine's investigating detective Hunter with his hands – demonstrating instead the 'soft' headbutt – but even so, it's not nice. Then there's that wheelbarrow joke...
Having been worried last week about the prospects for justice in 1980, it was good to see the West Yorkshire Police force band together and huddle in to protect their own this week. By 'their own' I mean their criminals as well as their coppers. In fact, the difference between the two sometimes seems to be very vague in Red Riding, which gives far more screen time to the constabulary than to the Yorkshire Ripper himself. This man is a serial killer, modelled on Jack the Ripper, yet when outside help arrives West Yorkshire Police – in the person of dirty-handed Bob Craven – are keen to point out that he is their Ripper, and they will catch him. Still, at least this is a force with pride in its villains. I suppose a strong adversary is a mark of a strong hero...maybe that's the logic best applied to the police force under such withering scrutiny in Red Riding. It's surely no coincidence that both of the first two episodes go some way to exposing corruption and gangland-style dealings within West Yorkshire's constabulary.
Note also the return of some characters from 1974 – including a somewhat altered BJ (Robert Sheehan) and his significant revelations. It's lovely the way this trilogy interacts within itself, the events that ended in last week's 'Jacobean' bloodbath continuing into this week's bloody conclusion.
Best moment of the episode (bar that final, sudden and somehow inexplicable twist) in terms of the trilogy itself? Hunter: Who would you call when a man breaks into your house, kills your dog and rapes your wife? Laws replies: Not West Yorkshire Police, because he'd already be there, wouldn't he?