The Boys: The Female of the Species

 "How do you know so much about the Spice Girls?"

Butcher's monologue about the Spice Girls alone would make this a bloody excellent hour of telly. But there's more. So much more I'm really enjoyng The Boys. Every episode advances the arc in various wool ways with lots of character development, world building, and the kind of dark humour that can only have come from the brain of Garth Ennis.

We begin with an intriguing flashback to Butcher's wife or girlfriend Rebecca who is no longer around- presumably dead? I'm sure we will be drip fed much more of this backstory over the coming episodes. We aso learn more about the Compound V den- A-Train has been running it, and V has been fed to a mysterious and now missing girl who speaks no English and has fearsome powers.

But there's much more. Horrifyingly, Homelander and Queen Maeve (mainly that cynical, self-centred bastard Homelander) arrogantly swan around while trying to stop a hijacking... and end up having to leave all 123 passengers to die as the plane crashes, deliberately not even saving a few people so there can be no witnesses to their incompetence. It's a magnificent sequence that reveals so much about these characters and this world. And worse, Homelander manages to turn it to the supes' advantage.

Interestingly, though, Maeve is clearly having a quiet attack of conscience. This whole sequence, if anything, overshadows the "Boys" and their search for the mysterious girl as they struggle to trust each other. But this is yet another episode of incredibly good telly. And next episode Hughie is expected to blackmail Ezekiel, a kind of closeted, Chrstian fundamentalist Mr Fantastic...