NBC

Now that’s how you do a finale. The Hunting Party caps off a run of great form with a brilliant ending that weaves its case of the...

I mentioned last week that Suits LA felt like it was over. The end of Lester’s trial had a climactic feeling to it.

It’s genuinely impressive how The Hunting Party keeps adapting its formula each week. Episode 9 continues a run of great form by finding another novel take on the procedural format while also making ground in the macro plot and Shane’s personal backstory.

I was surprised to learn that Suits LA still has another four episodes to go, since it really felt like it ended in Episode 6.

The Hunting Party is getting rather good, isn't it? I love watching the trajectory of a show in real-time; the so-so episodes when it's figuring out what works (and what doesn't), and then the better ones when it finds its feet and focus.

If you squint a little, Suits LA almost resembles a proper legal drama in Episode 5.

If nothing else, The Hunting Party is heading in the right direction. Episode 7 seems to have settled on what works best about the show, much like the previous episode did.

To be fair to Suits LA, it hasn’t exactly flaunted its spin-off status. This is either for better or worse, depending on what you’re looking for, but it’s pretty hard to argue that Episode 4, “Batman Returns”, is the outing most obviously coasting on the association.

This is more like it. Not to say, “I told you so”, obviously, but after an episode that let conventionality creep in, to its detriment, The Hunting Party really gets back on the right track in Episode 6.

Bad news – the dead brother is back. And this is no offense to Carson Egan, who plays Eddie Black perfectly well.

The Hunting Party unfortunately ends its run of improving form in Episode 5. "Roy Barber" isn't a bad episode, by any means, but it is one that seems to miss the point of NBC's high-concept procedural.

I think we can all agree that the Suits LA premiere was a little too chaotic for its own good. The good news is that things settle down a little bit in Episode 2, “Old Man Hanrahan”.

The premiere of Suits LA is like someone dared NBC to cram every character and subplot they plan to use in Season 1 into a single episode.

I could still use more of The Pit, as a setting and a concept, but I think we're getting there to a certain extent, and in the meantime, there's enough interesting stuff going on to hold the audience's attention.

On balance, Episode 3 of The Hunting Party is the best one yet, in large part because it seems to understand that everything involving the Pit and its secrets is significantly more interesting than the actual case-of-the-week plotting.

Is anybody there? Has the gap between the decent premiere of The Hunting Party and Episode 2, “Clayton Jessup”, been so needlessly big that everybody has forgotten this show exists?

NBC’s The Hunting Party has one of the more compelling concepts in recent memory. It’s about a top-secret subterranean prison built below a nuclear missile silo housing the deadliest serial killers humanity has ever produced, many of whom are supposed to be dead.

Brilliant Minds hasn’t always explicitly been about fear, but the theme has certainly lurked in the background. All of it comes to the fore in the...