Then You Run is a lesson in how to do ultraviolence on screen

There shouldn’t be anything funny about the opening scene of Then You Run. The series, released last week on Sky Max, begins in 2005, with a traffic jam. A man, credited as The Traveller (played by Norwegian actor Christian Rubeck), speaks on a carphone to what seems like his wife; we infer that he has a young child at home. The traffic idles. Darkness comes. The cars are at a standstill, now wrapped in thick cocoons of snow. The Traveller exits his car, and walks to the one in front. He quickly, brutally, murders the driver. He moves onto the next one, and does the same – snaps their neck. Only when he sees the sun come up, and traffic in front of him start to budge, does he smile and walk back to his car. In a glacial overhead shot, we see his car glide past a queue of eight unmoving vehicles – each one, we presume, a crime scene.

I say again: this should not be funny. It’s a remarkable way to open a TV show, and a shocking one. There is no joke here: the killing is staged with arctic indifference. (The jokes come later, after the story has pivoted to its core protagonists – four British teenagers on a crime odyssey in Rotterdam.) Yet it’s hard not to laugh. There is something about the violence that feels darkly gleeful – the sheer arbitrariness, perhaps, or the excess, or just the way it juxtaposes with the serene snowscape. Subsequent episodes also open with similarly murder-filled set pieces involving the enigmatic Traveller; the man has a body count that would make Hannibal Lecter wince. Then You Run has drawn comparisons to Scandi series such as The Killing, but in these sequences, it feels most indebted to Noah Hawley’s Fargo. Both series plumb the recesses of human evil for grim chuckles, revelling in the savagery hiding within our prosaic everyday life. At times, though, Fargo is all style and scant substance, violence and misadventure reiterating without heft. There are moments when Then You Run too lapses into this mode of arid cynicism. But then, in a flash, it undercuts it.

In Then You Run’s second episode, holidaying sixth-formers Stink (Vivian Oparah), Ruth (Yasmin Monet Prince) and Nessi (Isidora Fairhurst) attempt to shift five kilos of heroin that fell into their possession. Their scheme draws the attention of local kingpin Reagan (Richard Coyle), who quickly deduces the drugs are his. With Ruth in the hands of a subordinate, he meets with Stink and issues threats. Down the phone he coldly tells his underling: “Damage her.” This moment, and the audible (offscreen) violence that follows, have nothing of the Traveller’s mordant levity. Here, the danger is all too credible. The effect is one of sudden imbalance: the gut-punch realisation that real violence is rarely random or far-fetched. And it is all too often gendered.

In fact, male violence underpins much of Then You Run’s story. Even when it’s not being outwardly threatened or enacted, it lurks in the air, in the language the characters use. The men in the series habitually refer to women as “wh***s” or “c**ts”. (Then You Run does not strain for subtlety.) Such unabashed misogyny feels unusual on TV nowadays; some people will doubtless see it as gratuitous. But the fact that the series centres on four vulnerable teenage girls – hardly the most traditional leads for a bloody crime caper – lends purpose to its hard edges and moulds ugliness into social critique.

Then You Run never really touches greatness. Its tone is too fluctuant. The plotting is knotty, with too many flashbacks and time jumps. The performances are a mixed bag (Oparah is a standout, Coyle a snarling ham). But it also deserves to be seen. It demands a reaction. Contemporary television is overrun with murder, from Dahmer to Dexter to You. But Then You Run is one of the few programmes to capture violence in so many shades. Sometimes it’s bizarre and perversely amusing. Other times, it’s distressing and real. One thing’s a safe bet, though – more often than not, it’s carried out by men.

‘Then You Run’ is available to watch now on Sky and NOW