Jormungand - Episode 8

It's off to merry England we go for this week's Jormungand - and no, that doesn't mean we spend the entire episode sitting and watching Koko and her crew getting increasingly fed-up at border control.

Instead, after a jaunt through the Sussex countryside that sees Jonah give Lutz a lesson or five in a paintball-fuelled game of capture the flag, we move onto the serious business of trying to sell some UAVs (or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles if you'd rather) in the wake of escalating unrest between the imaginatively named Country A and Country B.  It's as if the writers aren't even trying with their naming schemes any more...

With a lot of money up for grabs, Koko finds herself up against her toughest opponent yet - ageing former actress Amalia Tolokhovsky, a rival arms dealer for the Euro group with a reputation for being quick off the mark.  True to form, by the time Koko arrives at each and every one of her contacts with an interest in these UAVs, she finds that Amalia has beaten her to the punch and sealed the deal, leaving our protagonist almost literally tearing her hair out in frustration.  Of course, Koko isn't one to give in quite that easily, and with the realisation that she's being spied upon she attempts to lay a false trail for her rival.  It might not be enough to throw Tolokhovsky off the scent, but it's only the opening gambit in a fierce rivalry that lays Koko's ruthless nature bare, even if she does ultimately go a little soft on her direct rival.

After all the (occasionally overblown) insanity of recent story arcs, this week's Jormungand sits firmly in the "simple but effective" camp, eschewing any real action or pitched gun battles in favour of a more cerebral take on the combative nature of arms dealing in the show's world.  For the most part, this approach actually worked pretty well - we already know that Koko can carry this series quite respectably on her shoulders, and although Amalia was perhaps a little too eccentric for my taste she made for a decent foil and adversary to create a nice change in pace that might not be the most memorable piece of story-telling in the world but it filled its time well enough.  Now, back to your originally programmed insanity...