I didn’t like the ending.
(Acting was nice. Some of the camera work was interesting). But the plot, just didn’t work for me. Joe as the killer, ok. (And there were some hints over the past couple weeks that he’d turn out to be the killer). I just don’t think they laid the foundation for that motive. And so even though finding the killer wasn’t the central point of the series, it was a point and I think it needed a better conclusion.
Was there a motive to lay foundations for? Joe was deluded about his intentions, Danny thought he could squeeze more cash out of him … it was never going to end well but it was a ‘heat of the moment’ murder: Looked like misjudged blackmail of a volatile delusional … ist.
Reverse engineering it, sure there had to be explanation/s for the money in Danny’s room, the two phones, the breakdown in the relationship between the boys, etc. That’s obv. not the same as motive but there were signposts to somewhere …
I was certainly impressed with the amount of content packed into each episode…it never felt rushed to me either.
I could have done without the threatening of the dog though; that really didn’t add a thing other than serving as a way to make Susan leave town (Nigel had already been firmly established as an unsavory character by that point, IMO).
Some fine acting, though also some acting that I found hard to take (Danny’s father, his sister, the bald plumber).
In the end I just found it too similar to recently trod territory of slowly (very slowly) examining the complete picture of response to child murder. I don’t mind slow, but there just wasn’t much payoff for sitting through that slowness.
The only thing I didn’t like was Beth asking Ellie ‘How could you not know?’ Beth didn’t know that her husband was having an affair, her daughter had a boyfriend, and her son was sneaking out of his room.
But maybe it was too soon for Beth to be forgiving. Or maybe that was the point.
Well, that was a call back to Ellie asking the same question of Susan Wright, whose husband was abusing their daughter.
I thought the “How could you not know” was the **perfect **thing for her to say. It WAS the whole point of the story IMHO. It illustrated the irony, the ambiguity, the unknowable-ness of what goes on inside people. As Alec said, “No one knows what goes on inside another person’s heart.”
As for Joe’s motive, again, the point is that motives aren’t that clear cut in real life. People fall, nay stumble, into things that turn out to be disasters. Joe said over and over he didn’t understand what happened to him, except that Tom had his own life, and Ellie had hers, and he just wanted something of his own. It started innocently, and ended short of an actual sex crime, but produced another crime instead, murder.
Jack, too, was in love with a child and was persecuted for it. And wound up marrying her and being happy for a time.
This story is full of blurred edges and unclear motivations, and this was emphasized over and over by camera work that showed reflections in windows and mirrors superimposed over other points of view.
Too soon for Beth to forgive Ellie? The DAY she find out that Joe murdered her son? Are you kidding?
And this answers a question posed earlier in this thread, “What was the reason to include the Susan-Nigel story at all?” This was why: to set up the irony of the conclusion.
I thought the whole thing was thoroughly satisfying… DS Miller’s reaction and how she tried to deal with was particularly well done. But a few parts niggle at me.
What are supposed to be left thinking about the psychic guy?
What about the mailman who had an argument with Danny?
It may be different in the US but people like this can be part of the entourage of a murder investigation, usually at the behest of a tabloid struggling to maintain the daily narrative of a police investigation.
God help us, they may even be the tabloid’s ‘house’ psychic doing a little overtime from predicting tomorrows star reading.
As was indicated, they may even peddle books on the basis of ‘how the police ignored my evidence’, etc, in a series of high profile murders. They tend to find an ‘in’ through a vulnerable or gullible member of the mourning family - in this case Beth. I wouldn’t call it an industry but parasites like this certainly exist.
I expected a bit of understanding.
I get that “we don’t really know anyone” was the point of the show, but shouldn’t that lead to “we don’t really know anyone so we shouldn’t judge them”?
Or he could have been sincere. I thought he was. He didn’t seem to want anything except to offer comfort. “No one can know what was in his heart” or anyone else’s in this program.
Again, the hallmark of this whole series was ambiguity, loose ends. unclear motivation. As much as we’d like all the pieces to fit together, they just aren’t going to. Like in life.
For sure, but it also added dimension to the significant theme of ‘people on the fringes of sex crime activity’.
I thought it was really clever that that only emerges as a theme - for me anyway - once we know the cirrcumstances of the murder; you suddenly look back and you see at one time or another half the cast has been involved in, or around or the same house as, under age sex.
Here is a YouTube video posted by ITV showing the wake for Danny Latimer. I believe the scene is after the funeral in the church and before the scene at night on the beach with the torches and the bonfires are lit. It adds some minor details.
I think it was Alec who said something about it being in the book stores in a few months - how Beth invited him in and shared her grief, etc, etc, etc. . Parasite, for me, is the right word.
I missed that.
Was this another one of those BBC things that was edited for American TV with stuff left out. Previous post by Dewey Finn implies that.
I might be completely off track with this, but I always thought that was very specifically a mother-to-mother statement, like it’s a mothers role or job to know what is going on in her house/domain, and to not know is a kind of deriliction.
Part of my reasoning is that I can’t, in the context of family, imagine a man saying it to another man.
I don’t think so. It was very much in passing, said fast in thick Scots 
Actually, that’s not what I was implying. The video I linked to was posted in April, presumably when the show aired in the UK. So I don’t think the scene was part of the show in the UK. And note that the show was on ITV in the UK, which is also a commercial network. So presumably it aired with commercials there as well.
Since it’s been renewed for another series, I’ve read elsewhere an idea of having Olivia Colman go back and re-open that other case, with Tennant advising her.
She was so excellent in this show.