There is a lot going on with the return of Sherwood (BBC One). The first episode alone contains a cold-blooded murder, a drive-by shooting, a sulphurous courtroom confrontation and an art-defacement protest against fossil fuels. Viewers following the action as it jumps up and down might feel like the cameraman who filmed the trampolining at the Olympics.

Screenwriter James Graham, known for his relentless productivity, has had neither the time nor the inclination to revisit old ground, and if he returns to his native Nottinghamshire he risks being faced with a difficult second album.

The first season fictionalised two unrelated murders that reignited tensions in a community long divided by the miners’ strike. The thought experiment underlying the new storyline is that the coal industry could return to this part of the Red Wall, promising jobs but also a bigger hole in the ozone layer. Although presumably inspired by a similar controversy in Cumbria, a spectacular win for this plot point is the opportunity to film a scene in the cooling tower of a power station.

Meanwhile, the country’s crime wave is taking centre stage. Hence all the shootings. After the crossbow killer in the first series, we meet another savage embodiment of the left behind of post-industrial Britain in Ryan Bottomley (a stealthy, stunning Oliver Huntingdon).

To tell a vast new series of interconnected stories about coal mining and drug trafficking, the plot has recruited a large battalion of heavy hitters. Robert Lindsay and David Harewood will have more to do in later episodes. Most conspicuous, and indeed most bloodcurdling, in this episode is Monica Dolan as the frosty crime leader Ann Branson.

Her arrival after the murder of her son Nicky certainly doesn’t bode well for Daphne Sparrow (Lorraine Ashbourne), whose secret past as an undercover cop is an unexploded powder keg. “What are you going to do about the vegetables, Daphne?” Ann asked during one visit, eyeing a chicken. Dolan is not in a motherly mood here. Never has an innocent question about a lunch menu been laden with so much veiled threat.

The episode’s ponderous script spits out information as breathlessly as a speed dater, establishing themes, reintroducing old characters in new clothes, and mixing in Robin Hood references. The new Sheriff of Nottingham, unlike her dastardly medieval predecessor, is a young mother married to another young mother. Sherwood isn’t what he once was, but Graham’s purpose still rings true.