Better ending (spoilers)

Wow, that's a pretty great ending, better than the real one anyway. In the show itself, judging by how skillfully the build up to the ending was written I was expecting something altogether more sinister. I like the double twist in you ending I might try & come up with a version if I have time. Overall Place of Execution was amazing, though the ending was a little bit of a letdown.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail-R.W Emerson

Don't give up your day job.

The actor playing Young George Bennett was really good, I think he would have made a great tormented pedophile-murderer. The author instead used this as her red herring solution and came up with a pretty absurd ending of a dodgy, implausible village conspiracy. A genuinely dark ending would have been to have Bennett be the rapist-murderer and also Catherine's real father. Eek!

All this dissatisfaction with the ending of Place of Execution is based purely on the television adaptation. But when it comes down to it, this IS an adaptation of a highly acclaimed novel (of the same name, by Val McDermid). I can understand your feelings that the ending here seemed inadequate after all the build-up and full characterisations. I suspect this would not be the case, however, had various details which were present in the book been carried through to the adaptation. Obviously, the film-makers had their reasons for making the changes, as some complexities would present difficulties in their translation to the medium of film. Some of the changes, as I recall, include:

1. Not only has Alison been repeatedly abused and raped by Hawkin, but she has fallen pregnant to him, aged only 13. Ruth Carter discovers this and so the plot to make Alison "disappear" develops. Thus, the book provided a much more believable reason for why Alison was required to leave Scardale and the proximity of everyone she knew so suddenly. It also provided a more reasonable explanation of Alison's whereabouts following her "disappearance" from Scardale (see point 5 below), including her ongoing relationship with her mother following Hawkin's conviction and execution. It seemed completely absurd to me that any mother would consider sending her abused daughter away overseas, never to see each other again, as we are told in the television adaptation.

2. In the book, George Bennett is married and his wife's first pregnancy progresses concurrently with his investigation of the Alison Carter case. His son, Paul, is in fact born within minutes of Philip Hawkin's hanging.

3. While bearing the same name as the character in the television series, the Catherine Heathcote of the book is a journalist, not a film-maker. She is a fictional device, enabling much of the present-day action, and is thus a fairly peripheral character in her own right. She has no personal history of direct involvement with the Alison Carter case or prior contact with Philip Hawkin, however she grew up in the nearby town of Buxton and was a year below Alison at school, although didn't know her. Catherine's personal and home life play absolutely no part in the book and there is no daughter or mother to take part in the action.

4. Catherine first gets the idea of writing a book about the Alison Carter case when she happens to meet George Bennett's son, Paul, and his fiance, Helen, while on business in Brussels. It transpires that Helen's sister, Janis Wainwright, actually lives in Scardale Manor house. The Carter case is referred to repeatedly in the book as having occurred simultaneously with the real-life notorious "Moors Murders" of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley in the vicinity of nearby Manchester. This background, when combined with Catherine's own experience of having grown up in the vicinity of Alison's disappearance, explain her personal interest in writing about the case.

5. Leading on from point 4., Helen's sister Janis Wainwright is, of course, really Alison Carter. After leaving Scardale, she endures her pregnancy in the household of her late father's sister and her husband, the Wainwrights, who live in Sheffield. She takes on the identity of the Wainwright's deceased daughter, Alison's cousin Janis, who was a similar age, but had died of illness a couple of years earlier. Helen turns out to be Alison/Janis's daughter, rather than her sister, the product of her rape by Philip Hawkin.

6. All these relationship complexities (which don't exist in the television series) provide the much more understandable reasons why George Bennett tries to stop Catherine's research and publication of the Alison Carter case. Not only has he been unwittingly instrumental in getting a man hanged for a crime that has never happened, but the revelations are likely to cause major ructions in the lives of his beloved only child and his fiancé. The suggestion that George has faked photographic evidence plays a somewhat smaller role in the book, as the principle basis upon which Hawkin tries to rebut the copious evidence against him at his trial.

If you enjoyed the intrigue of the television series Place of Execution, I strongly recommend that you read Val McDermid's novel upon which it was based, which is far stronger in conjuring up the menace and isolation of the setting and the complex motives of the various characters.

OP's ending was complete crap. The ending to this was absolutely perfect. My mother and I are McDermid fans ever since reading and watching the Wire in the Blood series. After seeing this I called her and told her to check it out. Her and I thought it was a great little series. I was totally surprised with the direction they went in. I had no quarrels with the ending.