Authentic, devastating and perfectly cast: Sherwood is the best BBC drama of the year so far

• This review contains spoilers of the final episode of Sherwood

Having flown straight and true for most of its six hours, the finale of Sherwood (BBC One) landed with a satisfying thud, fletches shivering to a neat stop. Sure, there were a few rogue storytelling gusts along the way. But James Graham’s drama of murder, scabs and old wounds in a Nottinghamshire colliery town was that rare beast: a TV show as emotionally involving as it was intellectually engaging.

So who was “Keats”, the mischief-making spy cop implanted in the community in the 1980s? And why was murderous bowman Scott (Adam Hugill) after them? In the end, it didn’t matter. In the final episode’s dry-mouthed interrogation scene, Scott was revealed to be just a lonely young man with no plan other than “to be seen” – a misfit with a crossbow, not an AR-15. After his first victim – Gary Jackson (Alun Armstrong), picked because he was a “big man” who bullied his father – his targets were chosen at random. His stalking of Daphne Sparrow (Lorraine Ashbourne) was a coincidence.

That she was Keats, revealed at the climax of episode five, was, in the end, by-the-by. It was only her sense of guilt at betraying her adopted community, her four decades of life there, that put her in danger: this time, at her own hands via a hidden revolver. Her climatic kitchen table high-noon with David Morrissey’s DCS Ian St Clair was devastatingly played. As with the rest of the series, Graham was less interested clunk-bang mechanics of plot – the scanty fumes which power shows such as Line of Duty – and more in the emotional truth of his story. Here were believable people, in a believable world, broken on the rack of history and their own mistakes. It was a real achievement. And all the more impressive because it’s so singular in today’s TV landscape.

That world was Sherwood’s greatest asset. Sure, its indecently good cast didn’t hurt. But Graham was inspired by two real-life killings in 2004 in the village he grew up in, Annesley Woodhouse, called “Annesley” in the show. And from the decades-long feud between neighbouring sisters to the wrong-un Sparrow family in the ramshackle farmhouse down the way, it rang true. You could smell the stench of spilled beer and stale resentment in the working men’s club. And some of the design choices were inspired: St Clair’s eye-candy extension, all light, french windows and four built-in ovens – count ’em, James Brokenshire – was as revealing of his character as the bottled conflict of Morrissey’s performance. It became a glass cage as his quest to catch the interloper “spy cop” grew obsessive, prowling around the village without realising that he was now its true outsider.

The sense of deep England, too, was evoked with an admirably light touch. There were ringing echoes, of course, of the mythology of Robin Hood, the green-hooded outsider coming to wreak havoc on an enclosed, moribund community. But just as much heavy lifting was done by the sweeping shots of full-leaved trees, swaying in the wind. The landscape was achingly gorgeous, and just a little too bright – in some ways, it was like a folk horror without the horror.

Or rather the horror had an all-too-human cause. I was glad that Graham chose not to tie things up with a focus on the spy cop subplot. In truth, the warring miners’ unions were a bit Judean People’s Front/People’s Front of Judea and the ghastly legacy of the Metropolitan Police’s undercover SDS unit is well-turned ground. In fact, the show’s weakest moments were when it got lost in the long grass of this plotline. Few people play gimlet-eyed truth-tellers like Lindsay Duncan, but her cameo appearance as a gimlet-eyed truth-telling solicitor in episode four was more exposition machine than fully-formed character. Likewise, the lengthy Eighties flashback in episode five jarred. While it was perhaps necessary from a plot perspective, some of its beats – a young copper bent at the root, a heroic dash towards a burning building – felt clichéd in contrast with the rest of the intricately-knotted series.

Because those twists, when they came, were chest-crushing. The death of Adeel Akhtar’s Andy – the train-driver-cum-spade-murderer – was superbly done. Broken and harried to the end, he wrapped self-pitying delusion around a small kernel of goodness. He would make an excellent Bond villain. The reunion of DI Kevin Salisbury (Robert Glenister) and his once-time lover Jenny Harris (Nadine Marshall) was a nifty bit of audience wrong-footing, too. With her cheating husband out the way, and a whole night at a picturesque B&B to themselves, the scene practically wrote itself. Instead, Salisbury collapsed in tears – memory of what was, and what could have been, proving a potent prophylactic.

2022 has been a purple patch for grown-up, serious drama on the BBC. The Tourist, The Responder and This is Going to Hurt were all excellent. But in the clarity of its storytelling, and the authenticity of its atmosphere, Sherwood split the bullseye: the best BBC drama of the year so far, and I’d hazard some time to come. No wonder it's just been recommissioned for a second series.