Kiri ended badly, as we knew it would.
The finale saw all the major characters suffering and finish stuck with their suffering facing a bleak future - even Sarah Lancashire’s dog.
Viewers had been prepared for the worst from the beginning - as soon as they saw she was Kiri’s social worker. (Sarah Lancashire that is, not her poor mutt Jessie.)
Gripping: Viewers had been prepared for the worst from the beginning - as soon as they saw she was Kiri’s social worker. (Sarah Lancashire that is, not her poor mutt Jessie)
Plus of course Kiri herself was long dead. The super-cute, precocious, 10 year-old who’d been raised by white middle-class foster parents, had lasted only 20 minutes into her own series. She’d been found murdered, seemingly, by her birth father (a former drug dealer with a record for violence just out of prison) back in Episode One.
Things got steadily grimmer from there.
In the climax anything positive was, well, relative at best.
Kiri’s birth father Nate Akindele and his own dad were finally united – but only in the context of Nate being in a cell, (unjustly) accused of killing his daughter.
Kiri’s foster mother Alice Warner and her son Simon were also able to say they loved each other – but only after their family had been torn apart too, ravaged by the terrible truth they had discovered about Kiri.
As for Kiri’s social worker (Lancashire), Miriam Grayson’s ailing, aged, dog Jessie didn’t have to be put down by the vet (as she/we feared) and that was about as good as it got. Even then Jessie was only given a year to live at most.
Grisly fate: The super-cute, precocious, 10 year-old who’d been raised by white middle-class foster parents, had lasted only 20 minutes into her own series
Horrible: She’d been found murdered, seemingly, by her birth father (a former drug dealer with a record for violence just out of prison) back in Episode One
Miriam was fired before she had the chance to resign as her bosses ensured they made her the scapegoat for the tragedy (for Kiri dying not Jessie that is).
On online petition had been started campaigning to stop her receiving her pension.
‘I feel like a rotting corpse,’ she sighed.
No one came out of it well, including us as the show’s main storylines ‘concluded’ (or not) with a series of annoying, ambivalent, cop-outs - rather than satisfactory resolutions.
We found out what had really happened to Kiri but not what happened many other characters as writer Jack Thorne delivered a denouement of the Whodunit that was brilliantly unexpected and twisted but then seemed to lose the courage of his convictions.
The shadow of injustice Thorne left hanging over it lost its weight as the case never reached the trial. And at least four people, including Miriam, knew enough to stop the innocent man being convicted.
Even the investigating officer had doubts about the guilt of the man she had arrested.
Suspect: Kiri’s birth father Nate Akindele and his own dad were finally united – but only in the context of Nate being in a cell, (unjustly) accused of killing his daughter
Family: Kiri’s foster mother Alice Warner and her son Simon were also able to say they loved each other – but only after their family had been torn apart too, ravaged by the terrible truth they had discovered about Kiri
‘If you don’t start looking after him that boy will end up in jail never to emerge !’ D.I. Mercer urged Nate’s father Tobi.
Alice Warner’s son Simon had worked out that his mother had lied in the statement she had made which the case against Nate rested on – which was more than the police did.
Even D.I. Mercer didn’t seem to question its veracity, even though she doubted Nate’s guilt and knew Alice’s strong motive for disliking him. (As Kiri’s father he had jeopardised the Warners adopting her and, Alice believed, had murdered her precious ‘daughter.’)
Simon had also deduced why Alice had done it (to protect her son from suspicion) and how.
(Alice had followed Miriam and Kiri to the house where Kiri was having an unsupervised visit with her grandparents and seen Nate parked outside.
Conveniently no one had witnessed Alice there and wherever Nate had actually been at the time, he had somehow contrived to avoid being filmed on CCTV.)
Plot: Miriam was fired before she had the chance to resign as her bosses ensured they made her the scapegoat for the tragedy (for Kiri dying not Jessie that is)
Storyline: We found out what had really happened to Kiri but not what happened many other characters as writer Jack Thorne delivered a denouement of the Whodunit that was brilliantly unexpected and twisted but then seemed to lose the courage of his convictions
Again unlike the police, Simon was the only one who deduced who was really responsible for Kiri’s death, correctly querying their blatantly dubious alibi.
‘Mum thinks it was me that killed her,’ Simon told his father as Jim was shaving, which she had. ‘She can’t even look at me, which considering she’s the only person I give a f**k about other than myself is a bit tragic.’
He then paused and continued musing in his strange way: ‘thinking about it I think it was probably you that killed her.’
The conversation that followed, as the rage beneath his father’s calm façade and the truth unravelled, was brilliantly awful.
Simon made it clear he wasn’t going to tell anyone about Alice lying in her statement because ‘at school I’ll be a Psycho Pervert with a murderer for a dad and mum will go to prison. Then I will end up in care which, although pleasingly ironic, no one wants.’
Simon’s price for his silence was for his father to tell him the truth.
Contrary to what he’d told the police, Jim had not been working but had come home to find Kiri packing to go away with Nate.
Surprising: Alice Warner’s son Simon had worked out that his mother had lied in the statement she had made which the case against Nate rested on – which was more than the police did
Dramatic: Again unlike the police, Simon was the only one who deduced who was really responsible for Kiri’s death, correctly querying their blatantly dubious alibi
‘She said she wanted to get to know her real dad. She wanted to stop the adoption. She wouldn’t… listen !’
As Jim had been the calm, composed, one in the family until now, the mixture of pain and rage in Steven MacIntosh’s voice and face as he cracked up was actually hard to bear, even when he continued: ‘We SAVED her ! We gave her EVERYTHING ! A f**king drug baby! And then she wanted to turn round and say we weren’t good enough?! Because of biology ! Because of the colour of our faces ! No, no, no. I’m not having that!’
Having produced this shocking denouement, Jack Thorne then promptly ruined it.
He absolved Jim of the murder the way he had Alice’s malicious (racist?) implication of Nate – presumably on the grounds they had just loved Kiri too much to cope with the pain of not adopting her (because of her real father).
In the first episode Kiri’s grandfather had identified her body, recoiling at the marks on her necks where she’d been strangled.
Now, shaking, Jim told his son that as he ran after Kiri she fell and hit her head on a rock.
Breaking point:As Jim had been the calm, composed, one in the family until now, the mixture of pain and rage in Steven MacIntosh’s voice and face as he cracked up was actually hard to bear
Coming clean: Jim told his son that as he ran after Kiri she fell and hit her head on a rock
‘How was I going to explain that?’ he cried.
With extreme difficulty?
Whether it was true and he had strangled her afterwards wasn’t clear – like a lot else.
Why Miriam Grayson hadn’t gone to the police to stop the injustice for example. (Simon had told her about his mother following Kiri and her social worker to the grandparents’ and then deliberately incriminating Nate.)
Why D.I. Mercer hadn’t tried to undermine or disprove Alice’s statement – and Jim’s fairly feeble alibi?
Why Simon himself hadn’t gone to the police – given his hatred for his father and love for Kiri? (He was surely too super-intelligent to believe the story about the rock, and must have been told Kiri was strangled.)
Questions: Why Miriam Grayson hadn’t gone to the police to stop the injustice for example. (Simon had told her about his mother following Kiri and her social worker to the grandparents’ and then deliberately incriminating Nate)
Unfolding: Why Simon himself hadn’t gone to the police – given his hatred for his father and love for Kiri?
It ended with Nate languishing in a cell as his case became politicised and Alice Warner driving Simon to his new boarding school. Again, whether she secretly believed it was Simon who’d been involved in Kiri’s death wasn’t clear, although she didn’t seem that bothered by it if she did.
Simon was about to tell her something but stopped at:
‘Dad is…’
What?
‘...the murderer’?
Simon, Miriam, and D.I. Mercer had been portrayed as the protagonists with good consciences and good character throughout. They all knew Nate was innocent. What Thorne was trying to say by having them do nothing about it wasn’t clear.
Not so much ‘ambiguous’ as just not knowing what to do.
The final scene saw Simon stop in his tracks as he walked into the school, possibly about to turn back?
After such a good premise, interesting issues about ‘trans-racial adoptions’, and such superb acting from MacIntosh, Finn Bennett (Simon), Wummi Mosaku (D.I. Mercer), Paapa Essiedu (Nate), and in particular Lucian Msamati (Tobi), Kiri and the viewers deserved better.
If the writer couldn’t care more about how his story really ended he could hardly expect us to.
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