Episode 4: thoughts on the ending (spoilers within)
There have been a few threads on the fate of Billy in Episode 4, and what the audience is supposed to be thinking as the credits roll.
Rather disappointingly, the BBC's own site says this:
"The episode concludes with Billy back on a football pitch, his new girlfriend providing commentary for his blind father."
Which is pretty categorical, and suggests "happy end, lights, curtain, applause". And hardly fits in with one's image of what has gone before in either this episode or previous ones. Nor does it seem a particularly McGovernesque ending.
Since the opening of the episode shows the boy beaten up and in the ICU, and we then go into flashback, almost as if the opening sequence was being dreamt by Billy, I was inclined to read it more as the workings of his comatose mind than an actual full recovery. Personally I found that a more satisfying conclusion, for the moral of many of these sad little stories is the massive and often catastrophic ramifications of one small action by someone who is fundamentally "good", or at least not all bad: not looking while driving, taking a leak in the bushes in the park, nicking a pair of trainers...
The series was in my view on shakiest ground (even though Jim Broadbent and Sue Johnson acted out of their skins in this one) in the somewhat soapy dénouement tacked on - salvation through a little girl's smile, etc, etc.
Admittedly I've seen only the four mentioned so far, and the pattern may be broken in later shows, but right now I find the BBC comment, well - just lame, and not worthy of the programme itself.
It's not often television makes me feel edgy and uncomfortable the way this series does - the writer managed it a few times in Cracker, and Potter's Singing Detective certainly hit that spot, so The Street is doing something right.
Which is probably why it feels to me like the Corporation's PR people didn't know what they were watching.