Union Jack: Connection

"Gavin, stop looking at my dick."

Ok, so Union Jack was already bloody good.But this episode- along with giving us all the usual wit and fourth wall damaging fun, seems to take things up a level. This far into the season it's clear we've got some seriously clever plotting going on. If you haven't seen it, and want to avoid spoilers, watch it on YouTube before going further.

Essentially the episode consists of Joe being captured and tortured by Axis Mundi as some twisted kind of test to recruit him as a replacement for Slaymaster... and we meet Vixen. Except all is surely not as it seems. We have two MI5 telepaths- the bling and sarky Alison and Kevin, but Kevin is apparently shot dead by Axis Mundi... but just as Vixen is about to offer Joe the chance to find the Baroness she's shot dead by Alison. What's Alison up to?

I don't suspect Gavin, mind, much as he may want to cover up Alison's summary execution of Vixen, who is surely not the big boss she seems- that would be too easy. His nice little speech about him being the baddie being "too obvious" as this is "not a movie" and "not a comic book" tends to deflect suspicion. Then again, are him and Alison in cahoots...? What's going on?

Plot stuff aside, there's so much cool stuff here, much of it wee-related. Joe gets out of the torture he's enduring by peeing on the laptop through which "Mastermind" is speaking. Zaran gets nobbled by his pee getting tasered- ouch. And, on a note, we're told that Captain Britain "is a Tory". Ouch. Poor Brian has surely been slandered.

This is, in spite of being very, very silly, quite seriously very good indeed.

Union Jack: Compromised

"You're like a shit Captain Britain."

Well, that went in a direction I wasn’t expecting. An Axis Mundi agent running MI5; Joe and Slaymaster uniting against a common enemy; lots of complex allegiances. A typically brilliant episode this week, with the usual likeable characters, witty humour and enjoyably tally fight scenes. This is a series that understands how dull silent fight scenes can be, and that’s appreciated.

Slaymaster certainly seems to be a cynic and no angel, but he claims to be reformed- this isn’t quite the character who blinded Betsy Braddock in the comics. Here, so far, he’s pretty much just a cool red herring. He’s also an indicator that Joe is somewhat out of his depth, but that’s a big part of what makes Union Jack a hero; Captain Britain he is not.

As ever, though, the joy is in the dialogue- the exchange about the password between Romany and Joe including “How the fuck am I going to get the word ‘banana’ into a conversation with a supervillain?”, and all the Captain Britain stuff. But on top of all the arc plot is becoming ever more intricate. I’m enjoying this a lot.

Look it up on YouTube!