Tainted Love – Part 2

Band of Gold ends in fire. The second half of Tainted Love brings together the two threats of the final story, the killer of Marva and Vinnie's grudge over Curly's money, and puts all the surviving women in the same burning building.

The murder plot turns first. Raymond, the man who blamed Rose for his arrest, kidnaps her. Rose tells him that Marva was killed by Shaun. Then Shaun dies, and Carol and Rose understand that they have been wrong. The man behind it is Charlie, the young pimp known as Little Charlie, who drew Carol's half-sister Lisa on to the Lane. He killed Marva.

Vinnie supplies the climax. Sacked by Carol, he has been looking for a way to hurt her since the start of Gold, and he finds it by setting fire to Curly's factory, the inheritance he believes should have been his, to claim the insurance. He does not know that Carol, Rose, Emma, Lisa and Charlie are inside. They all get out except Charlie, who dies in the flames.

The ending gives the series a kind of rough justice. The killer dies, the women live, and Carol's fortune, which had looked like the reward for two series of suffering, nearly kills her and her daughter. Kay Mellor's original idea, that women on the street can rely only on each other, holds to the last: Rose and Carol get out together.

Television Heaven's later review found the fiery finale hard to believe, and that is fair. Coincidence brings every major character to the factory at the moment Vinnie lights the fire, and the resolution of Marva's murder depends on a sudden realisation rather than investigation. Catherine Johnson's script prefers spectacle to the slow observation of Mellor's first series.

The strength of the ending is that it returns to the series' first principle. From the swimming pool in which Carol nearly drowned to the burning factory, Band of Gold has always saved its climaxes for moments when the women must rescue themselves. Rachel Talalay directs, and Fiona Allen and Kern Falconer close their roles as the police officers of the final series.

Jayne Ashbourne plays Lisa.

No further series followed. Over three years and eighteen episodes, Band of Gold had made Kay Mellor's name, launched or advanced several careers, including those of Samantha Morton and Lena Headey, and given ITV one of its most talked-about dramas of the mid-1990s.