Summary
The Cry Episode 4 delivered a weak and predictable ending to a rubbish miniseries, but at least it had the decency to give TV’s most detestable man his welcome comeuppance.
Well, thank goodness that’s over. After four weeks of needlessly convoluted nonsense that only kept most people engaged week-to-week because they were naively hoping it would improve, The Cry Episode 4 delivered a weak, predictable and unsatisfying ending to BBC One’s miniseries – although I suppose it finally ending is satisfaction enough.
Finally, the truth was revealed. It was Alistair (Ewen Leslie), not Joanna (Jenna Coleman), who gave baby Noah that fateful dose of medicine in the airport. It was Alistair who, knowing this, deliberately manipulated his partner into believing she had been responsible for her son’s death, and who led the Melbourne police on a merry goose chase by also fibbing about the site of Noah’s burial.
If you were wondering, he actually slung Noah’s body in the building site that we saw him loitering outside last week, and for some reason even took Joanna to visit the building when it was completed so he could eerily photograph her stood on the exact spot where he had buried their offspring.
After murdering Alistair – oh, yeah, she murdered him – Jo bought the house, and The Cry Episode 4 ended, perhaps fittingly, with her laying down on the floor above baby Noah’s makeshift grave. Creepy? Sure. But the show never really got off the ground either.
I know, I know – cheap shot. But even Alistair’s death was unsatisfying. Unfastening his seatbelt at the last minute, Joanna sent their car plunging off a winding Highland road and straight into a ditch. In court, she smugly insisted that she’s already seen hell, and that really, however they judge her, there’s nothing else they can do to punish her. Evidently, the ploy worked. Good for her.
Me, I would have preferred to see Alistair’s name besmirched even in death. I’d have liked his ex-wife, Alexandra (Asher Keddie), to know that he ruined every life he touched, not just hers, and for his daughter, Chloe (Markella Kavenagh), to know that her dad had to be made to pay for that haircut. That would have been better. But at least The Cry Episode 4 had the decency to off him. That’s the least it could do.
If only it had had the decency to be any good.
