Opening with an amusing fantasy sequence of Gene (Philip Glenister) on kid's TV show Jackanory reading a story about Alex's "love of brains", information is imparted that the doctors in 2008 are injecting Alex (Keeley Hawes) with "super-antibiotics" to fight an infection, giving the episode a countdown element. From there episode 8 plays like a direct continuation of last week's excellent story, with CID investigating police corruption when a snitch called Doyle's (Chris Pollard) body is found dismembered in a fish n' chip shop. The killer turns out to be mechanic Tiny Tim (Aidan Kelly), who is connected to the corruption scandal but unwilling to talk for fear of being killed...
Meanwhile, Alex begins to suspect that Martin Summers (Adrian Dunbar) is a personification of the infection her body's fighting in 2008, but is having difficulty persuading Gene to let her investigate the Summers connection. In one of the episode's best scenes, after Gene listens to an audio tape of Alex badmouthing him and CID (passed to him by Summers in secret), he asks Alex to explain herself and tell the truth. And, finally, Alex comes clean about being a time-traveller, but finds herself being disbelieved and causing a the breakdown of their professional relationship. Gene even begins to suspect that goody two-shoes "Bolly" is part of the corruption scandal, so suspends her from work.
Elsewhere, Chris (Marshall Lancaster) struggles through the day at work, finding himself ignored by colleagues and left behind at the office when the rest of the team go out on busts. Shaz (Montserrat Lombard) seems sympathetic to her fiance's plight, but their relationship is still uncertain given Chris' awful mistake in accepting backhanders. However, Chris gets a chance to put things right when he manages to get insider information from his criminal contact about a gold bullion robbert that appears to be the fabled "Operation Rose" Summers is obsessed with, and DS Supermac mentioned as his dying words.
There's some really good stuff in episode 8, even if the week's investigation was a little flat in places. It was a straightforward story with some excellent diversions and flourishes: like Gene having his head turned by Tiny Tim's sister Jenette (Eva Birthistle), who almost gets her man by proving herself with Western trivia (or was that sequence a dream..?); the frankly hilarious moment Ray (Dean Andrews) unwittingly chomps down on a deep-fried penis, as the scene hard-cuts to him gargling with mouthwash1; seeing Gene and Alex's rock-solid relationship sour very credibly; and in discovering how Operation Rose and Martin Summers are linked. It turns out that Summers was essentially the Chris character in the real 1982, pressured into corruption, so has been trying to fight his demons and change the imagined-'82. In some ways he's been on a personal crusade just as Alex was in season 1 to save her parents, as it's also confirmed that he's the male hospital patient from episode 1's teaser and has been "linked" to Alex's subconsciousness.
In examining the nitty-gritty, there wasn't much here that we hadn't guessed or suspected for awhile -- it was just a case of getting specifics about Operation Rose and for the series to decide what it wanted Summers to be (friend, foe, real, imaginary, help, hindrance.) But I'm still not sure why Summers needed Alex to embrace corruption to survive in '82 (or why he would want to exist in this faux-world), why he was creepily obsessed with roses like a stalker (beyond the fact it made an intriguing motif), and the earlier Freemasons aspect to the mystery didn't really lead anywhere. It may have helped if we'd at least learned that the young PC Summers was in the brotherhood.
Still, for all its faults, this was broadly a compelling and entertaining finale from writer Matthew Graham that achieved its aims. The real talking point is undoubtedly going to be the wonderful climax, with a Gene/Summers/Alex standoff that sees Summers shot and killed, but not before he shoots Alex dead... and, after an ethereal whitewash, we're transported to the present-day. Awakening in her hospital bed, Alex is swiftly reunited with daughter Molly (Grace Vance) -- a reunion that felt disappointingly lukewarm, sadly. But, hey, I was distracted from that damp squib by this unexpected development! Is this the end? Isn't there another season to go? Well, yes...
With Alex left alone in her bed to recover (noticing the dead body of Martin Summers wheeled past her doorway), the hospital monitors suddenly buzz into life and we see Gene Hunt, apparently talking to the comatose Alex in a POV shot and desperate for her to wake up because he's been blamed for shooting her. Thus, in a mind-bending twist, Alex is finally awake and lucid in 2008 but stuck in a coma back in 1982?!
It's a delicious development and progression of Alex's malady, although I can't quite wrap my head around its logic. I suppose there are only a few possible explanations: (1) 1982 was reality all along, and now Alex is in an impossibly accurate, imaginary 2008. (2) There's a part of Alex's brain that's still fantasizing, so she's in a kind of "waking dream" state and will have to return to imaginary-'82 to absolve Gene of suspicion by putting herself back into a coma.
Whatever the answer, it's a fantastic new development that has me psyched for the third and final season (recently confirmed by the BBC). How long will we spend in 2008 with Alex and Molly next year? Will she have to commit suicide like Sam Tyler to get back to '82? Is there scope to have Gene and the gang arrive in 2008 at some point? If they're all merely figments of her imagination, why not? Or would it be a shark-jumping moment seeing Gene in the 21st-century, as a Harvey rabbit only Alex can see? I think so, too.
8 June 2009
BBC1, 9pm
written by: Matthew Graham directed by: Catherine Morshead starring: Philip Glenister (Gene), Keeley Hawes (Alex), Dean Andrews (Ray), Marshall Lancaster (Chris), Montserrat Lombard (Shaz), Adrian Dunbar (Martin Summers), Eva Birthistle (Jenette), Aidan Kelly (Tiny Tim), David Kennedy (DCI Carnegie), Joseph Long (Luigi), Geff Francis (Viv), Grace Vance (Molly Drake), Ellena Stacey (Carley), Chris Pollard ("Rock Salmon" Doyle), Mark Straker (Doctor), Brett Allen (Blagger), Simon Sherlock (Bent Copper) & Greg Donaldson (Guard)
1. I have to say, it amuses me how the writers toy with Ray's sexuality. While he's often seen ogling big-breasted women, he sometimes makes throwaway comments that hint at his bisexuality -- here, he agrees with Alex that seeing athlete Daley Thompson in a "bluey" would be good.
