TV drama endings a bit of a let down

I’m talking of course about the latest BBC drama which has had us all glued to our screens over the last few weeks; The Bodyguard.

Featuring Scots actor Richard Madden as David Budd, a police officer suffering from PTSD and family problems following an army stint in Afghanistan, it’s been all people have talked about recently.

So obviously catch-up was no good here, we all HAD to watch the thrilling finale on Sunday night, for fear of overhearing spoilers at work the next day.

It’s been a great series, but it seemed to follow that increasing trend in TV dramas, where the writers go to extraordinary lengths to create tremendous tension, put the relatable characters in extreme danger, take us to the very edge of our seats, only to get bored in the last 15 minutes and just make it so everything just kind of sorts itself out, thereby eliminating all that effort to create dramatic plotlines in the first place.

And in case you’re still hoping to see the Bodyguard on catch-up, I’ll warn you know; spoilers lie ahead.

So in the end, after weeks of watching Budd suffer again and again, everything got sorted out just because the baddie, who surprise surprise turned out to be his boss, just decided to confess everything. And the bombmaker? It was the woman from the start all along.

It’s almost as if they wrote a great show but had no clue how to end it and then wrote it on the back of a fag packet.

The only way they could have made it worse would be if Budd were to wake up at the end and it turns out it was all a dream, and he’s still happily married.

It’s not the first big BBC drama to fall into the trap of looking for easy ways to tie it up in a hurry.

The Replacement in 2017 was fantastic, over the course of a few weeks we were introduced to Morven Christie as Ellen Rooney, an architect who goes off on maternity leave and returns to work to find that her replacement (Paula) is trying to take over both her professional and personal life.

Over three episodes viewers up and down the country chewed at their fingernails as the tension was cranked up to the max – death, intrigue, suspense – it was all there.

That is, right up until the end, where Paula is about to get away with the crime, changes her mind, confesses everything and walks off to hand herself in, leaving Ellen trapped in a garrage which is rapidly filling up with toxic fumes – luckily, she teaches herself to expertly hotwire a car in seconds to escape.

I watched three series of BBC serial killer dramaThe Fall all the way through, stopping before the final episode purely out of spite because it was getting so bad.

It’s amazing the way we get drawn in to these big dramas with all the suspense before the ending ultimately lets us down.

There’s a TV version of HG Wells’ War Of The Worlds coming this Christmas, I can’t wait to see how that one ends . . .