Summary
The Victim Episode 4 brought the BBC drama to a fitting conclusion and produced perhaps the best fifteen minutes of television so far this year.
Well, I was half right. In my recap of last night’s episode, I predicted that Craig Myers (James Harkness) was really Eddie J Turner. And it turned out in The Victim Episode 4 that he was. But I also predicted that all those years ago he was falsely accused; that perhaps he didn’t kill young Liam (Zak Leyni). That’s where I was wrong. But the reality probably stayed truer to the show’s themes than my speculated outcome, especially the way it was handled here, in fifteen minutes of truly sensational television.
But we’ll get to that in a minute. There were other loose ends to deal with first. Anna Dean (Kelly Macdonald) was found guilty of inciting murder, which is fair enough. She was guilty, and irrespective of the fact that Craig turned out to be Eddie after all, he served his sentence and had built a law-abiding life for himself since. For the since time since the series began I actually liked Anna in The Victim Episode 4, but fair’s fair, I guess.
The Grim Reaper who attacked Craig on Halloween was William Napier (Nicholas Nunn), Anna’s troubled young patient, and he did so without her knowledge. That essentially exonerates creepy Danny Callaghan (Andrew Rothney), who did ingratiate himself into the family by schmoozing Louise (Isis Hainsworth) just so he could be weirdly close to the mother whose son he found dead. He’s an oddball, no doubt, but he’s also not guilty of any crime.
And that leaves Tom (John Scougall), who after last night’s episode was public enemy number one. But he’s innocent, too. He met with Craig/Eddie’s social worker as a favor to his best friend, and it almost got him killed.
There were two highlights in The Victim Episode 4, both involving James Harkness. The first was when he initially admitted his real identity, in a mediation set up so that Anna could apologize for ruining an innocent man’s life. The second was the show’s extended ending sequence, during which he sat opposite Anna under the bridge where he killed her son and explained it to her in detail.
This stretch might have been the best television I’ve seen all year. It was frank, emotional, and wonderfully performed by both Harkness and Kelly Macdonald, who finally came into her own here. In a sense, Anna needed to hear it, unfiltered, to help her process the hatred she felt. By her own admission, she had waited for years to see Eddie J Turner suffer, and it had never entered her mind that maybe he had been suffering all along. Maybe he was already a victim; of his own abuse, of what he did, of what he continues to live with. He said himself that he wasn’t entitled to a single moment of happiness, and by all accounts, he hadn’t had one since that day. Perhaps he never had one at all.
The ending of The Victim Episode 4 was Anna finally coming to terms not just with Liam’s death but with her own guilt and rage and desire for justice to be served. As Christian (Cal MacAninch) approached Craig/Eddie with a knife, she stepped in front of him, to protect him. She’ll never forget, but on some level she forgave. After all she’s been through, perhaps that’s the thing that’ll finally bring her peace.
