The Dead Land: Part 2

The Dead Land concludes the series, and it concludes it without flinching. The case of the killer targeting homeless men is settled, the Japanese funerary ritual is accounted for, and Michael's pursuit of Tony Hill reaches its end — and so does the show's willingness to protect its own characters.

Wikipedia's outline of the series records what happens: Michael, the psychotic killer, is still at large, and in the finale he rapes DC Paula McIntyre. It also records that DC Chris Collins, introduced in the opening story, does the same. This dossier has not independently verified that sequence and flags it as resting on a single source, but if the account is accurate — and the official press material's promise of "devastating consequences for both him and his police colleague Detective Inspector Alex Fielding" is consistent with it — then it is the darkest turn the show ever took.

McIntyre is the right character for it and the most costly choice available. Emma Handy had played her since 2004 as the series' most consistently decent presence: a young detective who took on responsibility eagerly, who was used as bait in Torment and kidnapped and who owed Hill her life after he saved it, and who had followed the show through every configuration of its cast without ever becoming the story. Her destruction is the series' final statement about what the work costs, and it lands on the person who had least to do with the argument.

The finale's other business is its last case. Hill works with the ambitious Oxbridge graduate DI Andy Hall while the killer targets homeless men, and someone is stalking Hill throughout. It is a fair structure for a final episode: a new colleague who represents the generation coming through, an old adversary arriving to settle accounts, and a case that allows Hill to do the one thing he has always done.

What the show declines to do is resolve itself. The institutional argument between Hill's method and the force's is left where it was found, the Hill–Fielding relationship is not settled, and the programme ends on damage rather than on reconciliation. That is consistent rather than abrupt: a series that had spent six years arguing that understanding damaged people damages the people who do the understanding was never going to close with a comfortable ending.

It drew 4.80 million viewers, the lowest figure recorded for the series and a long fall from the 8.08 million who watched the first part in November 2002. IMDb users rate it 7.9. The series was cancelled in February 2009, with a cost base of £750,000 an episode reported as the main reason and ITV pointing to six series and a wish to bring through new programmes.

It is not the strongest final episode the show could have made, and the collapse of Chris Collins is a thread that had been planted well but resolved cheaply. What it does properly is the thing the series had been doing since its first night: it refuses to make the investigation safe for the people who conduct it.