If you can hack the relentless virtue-signalling, the tiringly drawn-out buildup to something - anything (!) - happening, the seemingly irrelevant hovering around lesser characters and the fact that this series doesn't make any damn sense if watched on its own, then the Punisher might be the show for you.

The writers really go out of their way to avoid playing to the audience's expectations by depicting the Punisher doing anything too cliché like, you know, beating up or shooting bad guys. The result is a more layered character who spends most of the first series brooding and procrastinating, lost in his own thoughts, punishing himself.

I'd waited patiently for it to build up through six episodes before concluding that the plot is probably already going as fast as it's willing to go, about half the speed of a scarecrow with emphysema. Hope kept me going - hope that I would see this version of Frank Castle impress me.

Meanwhile I'd heard great things about Daredevil, and heard that it crosses over with the Punisher, so I decided to give it a watch while I waited to see how long it would take Frank Castle to go full-Punisher in his own show.

Let me give you the heads-up I never had. The Punisher is not the beginning of the Punisher's story - it follows on from Daredevil season 2. So if you want to see how this Punisher came to be, you can't rely on his own series to fill you in, in fact it will just confuse you. What you have to do is watch another Marvel show for two seasons. I know, crazy, right? But actually worth it, trust me.

Marvel seem intent on giving their audience a 'bag of comics' to follow, not just one, and so all their shows swap spit frequently and the more you follow one the more you will have to follow all the rest to get the complete picture.

The Punisher loses points as a series because it cannot be considered a standalone series - it does not tell the main character's complete story - however with perseverance (and quite a bit of additional viewing) you will be rewarded - eventually!