Spoiler alert: this recap contains details about the second episode of River, which is shown on BBC1 on Tuesday nights.

We are back in River’s night-time city: the London where he lives is mostly dark, jewelled with tiny lights, but it doesn’t feel at all friendly. When he later admits to the psychologist that he has no friends, we can see the mise-en-scène really backs this up. A great example of production design, direction and script working in unity.

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Tonight’s 70s floor-filler is I’m in the Mood for Dancing by the Nolans, lest we forget Stevie’s appalling taste in music. I say appalling, but I was singing along, so I can’t judge.

If episode one was about establishing River’s relationship with Stevie (Nicola Walker), tonight is given over to discovering the unknown depths of River himself. There are so many moments during this episode when Stellan Skarsgård’s deep-set eyes betray all that loss. And the psychologist (a great cheat’s way of filling in a character’s background) mentions that River lived with his grandmother until he was 14. I can’t think of another drama that insists on its main character being so relentlessly in frame, yet Skarsgård doesn’t let the intensity drop for a second. For his sake, I’m glad the first series is only six episodes long.

When the Lambeth Poisoner (Eddie Marsan) pops up on the DLR platform, he taunts River and tells him to jump in front of the train. A part of him wants to give up, but he fights it. “I don’t want to talk to you today,” he roars at the air beside him as fellow commuters look puzzled.

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The big revelation, in terms of Stevie’s murder, comes when River zooms in to her face just before the bullet’s impact and sees that she recognised the driver of the blue car. His boss says forensics found her DNA inside the car, too, and the first doubts are cast about whether she was on the straight and narrow.

We hear more about her background and the murky connections of her East End family as the day of her funeral rolls around. We also discover that she put her own brother in prison; he didn’t speak to her for 16 years.

In the men’s loos, Stevie talks River down from a panic attack as he asks her about the forensics results. I have never wanted so much to reach through the screen and hug someone. Skarsgård gives River his lost quality, but cuts through it with a palpable strength. HOW DOES HE DO THAT?

River’s ultimate boss, Marcus McDonald, says he’s just waiting for the psychiatric report so he can sign off River for a few months. He obviously sees him as a liability, but we know his line manager, Chrissie Read (Lesley Manville), wants him to wind his neck in and try to keep his idiosyncrasies sub-radar – she needs his brain.

“I decapitated a man, River,” says Stevie’s brother, making his point at Stevie’s wake while their mother weepily sings Since You’ve Been Gone to her daughter’s coffin. It’s excruciating, and a bit heavy-handed, but you can see why Stevie might have left behind this family for a new life on the right side of the tracks.

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The scene between Stevie and River around the back of the pub is heartbreaking. She cries as she says he is the only person she really wants at her burial. He replies: “I’m not family.” They clearly meant a great deal to one another.

In his dealings with Tia, the girlfriend of the now-deceased Riley, his tenderness is overwhelmingly sweet. His outsider status makes him empathetic to others who feel different. “You always were good with the window-lickers,” says Stevie, putting it slightly less tenderly.

The theme of parents and children is ever-present. River’s paternal feelings towards Stevie (he balks when the psych asks him if they had been on a “date”) are always in parallel to the parental relationships going on the in subplot. Tonight, it’s poor Tia and her desperation to be a good parent “this time”.

We leave River, once again at night, the lights twinkling behind him, as he talks to Stevie in his office. “Your cheeks explode when you laugh,” he sobs. I was sobbing too. At his final wail – “You’re still here!” – I had to take a moment. I don’t think another actor has ever been so adept at making me cry.

In that moment of complete vulnerability, River admits to the psychologist that he has an undiagnosed mental condition of some sort. And that he has no friends. His only friend was Stevie, and now she’s dead.

As the Nolans swell back to full volume on the soundtrack, River walks towards the pub to join his colleagues and have a bash at pretending to be one of them.

Stream of consciousness

• River’s fortune cookie from the Chinese restaurant on the night Stevie died said: “Do not go where the path may lead. Go where there is no path and leave a trail.” This could be River’s motto already. He need no encouragement to go down the road less travelled.
• A lot of focus is being placed on the blue car, but as River watches the moment of Stevie’s death over and over I want to know about the white van on the other side of her as she hits the deck.
• “I might be a skunk dealer, but I’m no murderer,” sneers Riley as he chugs an afterlife Coca-Cola. We and River must cross him off the list. It’s all about the man in the shabby coat now.
• Riley taunts River about social injustice as he predicts the same fate for his own baby: the short journey from the care system to crime. This is way more than a show about baddies and goodies.
• Stevie tries to teach River small talk as he rides in the car with Ira. The third person in their every conversation is dynamically brilliant. It always adds something.
• Riley’s final parting shot as he leaps once more from the balcony is heartbreaking. “I only went out for a milkshake.” River says he’s sorry, and he means it.

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