And Your Byrde Can Sing:Ozark S3.

"If you can't get what you want with reason, you have to get it by force" - Omar Navarro

"Never let a good crisis go to waste" - Winston Churchill, by way of Wendy Byrde 

Both the above quotes signpost just what a morality vacuum almost everybody involved has become by the time Ozark (Netflix) reaches its third season. While season one was flawed but fun, and season two was deep and brooding yet dragged in places, season three is a thrilling rollercoaster ride, often shockingly violent, full of plot twists. 

Some of them far more credible than others. Within the first six seconds of the first episode somebody has been stabbed and a throat has been slit, the second episode manages to top that, and the third is the most troubling of all. Starting, as it does, with scenes of Illinois soft rock balladeers REO Speedwagon playing live to a convention of dentists on the roof of the Byrde's new floating casino, The Missouri Belle.

From the Belle, on the Lake of the Ozarks, we're reintroduced to several of our favourite characters. Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy (Laura Linney) are making adverts for the casino in which they present themselves as kind and loving parents while, at the same time, undergoing therapy with Sue Shelby (Marylouise Burke), and going behind each other's back at almost every available opportunity.

Which, of course, has an effect on their children. Jonah (Skylar Gaertner) is making money mining fake gold on the Internet and Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz) has bought him a drone to use for home security. The children are, of course, older now - and far more aware of the danger that their parents' line of work has put them in.

Rose Langmore (Julia Garner) is working for Marty at the casino, Darlene (Lisa Emery) is attending mother and baby workshops and generally behaving like a complete and utter psychopath, Wyatt (Charlie Tahan) is smoking a bong in a big bubblebath in a palatial lakeside mansion he's broken into (one of many), and Helen (Janet McTeer), the Byrdes 'lawyer', is being waterboarded by her own people.

The Navarro cartel. Who, in Coahuila in northern Mexico, have become embroiled in a predictably lethal turf war. Scores are dying. That's a fair few loose ends to try to bring together but, in season three, the makers of Ozark managed this skilfully. It's much better structured than season two, the narrative is clearer, the threat and menace is ramped up to a more engaging level, and some of the superfluous characters are jettisoned, or sidelined, to make way for more interesting new characters.

Frank Cosgrove (John Bedford Lloyd) is a member of the KC (Kansas City) mob and acts as both rival and business associate of the Byrdes, his son, Frank Jr (Joseph Sikara) is wayward, violent, and enters into an intense rivalry with Ruth, Agent Evans (McKinley Belcher II) is still on Marty's case but he's been joined by an even tougher cookie - Agent Maya Miller (Jessica Francis Dukes), and Felix Solis manages to exude a sense of quiet menace as Omar Navarro.

But it's Wendy's brother, Ben (Tom Pelphrey), who really lights up the third season. His poor mental health and confused sense of morality provide a convenient springboard, almost a deus ex machina, for some of the season's most dark and dramatic set pieces and you're torn between rooting for him (when he falls in love, when he tries to do the right thing) and loathing him (when he turns violent, when he places those he loves in mortal danger).

He believes himself, not entirely incorrectly, to be the only sane person in this world of lunacy and he says it how he sees it (no matter how partial his view may be). Many of the other leading players, most now fully adapted to a life of crime, seem to be at war with each other. Sometimes that war is between enemies, sometimes it is within families and organisations themselves. Sometimes, quite often, that war is resolved with violence and murder. Sometimes it is negotiated with dialogue.

There are lots of scenes of people using emotional persuasion, or even glib flattery, that borders on blackmail to get what they want (witness the way the Byrdes divide and destroy rival casino boat owners Carl (Adam Lefevre) and Anita (Marceline Hugot) and Jason Bateman, as Ozark has developed, moves ever closer to a form of non-acting. He simply reads his lines, looks functional, and stays calm unless a very extreme scenario demands a raised voice.

He's become the ice to everyone else's fire and this contrast works to Ozark season's three advantage. Crime, as Helen coldly points out, is not a career route for the mentally unstable. It is an ultimately conservative line of work that accommodates little, if any progressive, thought. So when Marty is imprisoned in what appears to be a Mexican dungeon designed by Piranesi it is presented as both an existential dilemma for him and as weird gothic psychological torture porn for the audience.

When Omar Navarro calls from south of the border, he always seems to be in locations that appear to have been painted by Renaissance and Baroque masters like Raphael, Botticelli, or Caravaggio. His silent henchman Nelson (Nelson Bonilla) doesn't say much and, as we've learned watching dramas like this in the past, that never bodes well.

A drama that features a horse getting its balls chopped off, Helen's daughter Erin's (Madison Thompson) quest to lose her virginity, and a young man and a lover old enough to be his grandmother selling 'artisan' honey as a front to cover their genuine, and illegal, business is still quirky but the quirks have been fed into the story far more seamlessly than in previous seasons.

The soundtrack (Radiohead, Wu-Tang Clan, Gang Starr, The Sonics, Erik Satie, Silver Jews, Dion, Run the Jewels, Eric B & Rakim, Etta James, Bobbie Gentry, Theophilus London ft Giggs with what should have been last year's festival anthem Bebey, and, of course, REO Speedwagon) is still great but this time the drama matches it. I genuinely had no idea what direction things would pan out until the very last second of the very last episode. Following season two, I'd gone into the third season of Ozark with fairly low expectations. By the time I came out the other end these exceptions had been met and easily exceeded. I'm glad I got that re-up.