Clean

The first series of Band of Gold ends with the killer stepping out of hiding and the women saving themselves. Clean begins with a sinister present for Carol, a message that Gina's killer has chosen her, and builds through a burglary that uncovers his private shrine to the murders, complete with video footage of the woman he intends to kill next.

The solution had been there from the start. When Carol finally comes face to face with the killer, in a deserted community centre, he proves to be the client from the first episode: the man whose house she visited with Gina, and from whom she stole money. The theft, a small act of opportunism, connected the two women to the man who would hunt them. He tries to drown Carol in the centre's swimming pool, and she is saved not by DCI Newall but by the other women, led by Curly, the client Carol once scalded and suspected.

That last detail matters. The rescue confirms the series' central idea, that the women of the Lane can rely only on each other and on unlikely allies, and it redeems Curly, an odd, lonely man rather than a threat. The police are not the heroes of this ending.

The ending also reaches beyond the killer. Mr Moore, the loan shark whose demands drove Gina on to the streets, turns out to have been working for George Ferguson, the businessman behind so much of the women's misery. Carol and Rose decide to leave prostitution and set up a cleaning company in direct competition with Ferguson's. After six weeks of fear, the series closes on something like optimism.

Kay Mellor's first series was nominated for the BAFTA for Best Drama Serial, and the finale explains its hold on the audience: bookmakers had taken bets on the identity of the killer, and viewers held parties to watch the reveal. The structure is satisfying because the answer lies in the first episode, where a careful viewer might have caught it.

The weakness is the climax itself. The shrine, the video and the attempted drowning belong to a more conventional thriller than the rest of the series, and Television Heaven's later review points to the show's melodramatic climaxes. Charles Beeson directs the finale.

The final image of two women starting a business, rather than a man being led away, is what Band of Gold is really about, and it set up a second series about whether a fresh start could last.