The Son & The Mother?

Well, with the 11th hour reveal that the son has anger management issues could not have been inconsequential.

We saw Claire with bruises around the eye, and we presumed it was the anger issues of Eric that caused that--and probably did.

If a son gave the mom a black eye, and Eric was innocent, he would have noticed and something would have come up about that. But it was undoubtedly Eric.'

We also saw dad being kind of mean at times, and with harsh and ugly expressions earlier on--like smiling in one direction, then getting an evil look while glancing away.

Claire was signaling to the kids that something was wrong at home when she also was crying earlier and begging to leave home "to be somewhere safe." Eric was probably a bully and hit out and she couldn't articulate that.

Establishing: Eric is a violent man!

I think in the end, Eric made up the whole story about her killing the young men, to save his neck. He saw the out and took it.

He presented in the interrogation as a self-loathing gay man--and back in the 60s and 70s his hatred of himself might have extended to beating up men he was attracted to...escalating to killing two of them.

A self-loathing hatred of himself combined with severe anger management problems then could have produced some serious assaults--he could have had 3, 2 kills and beating up the 1 guy before he was rendered incapable after his accident.

Remember in his confession how he blithely dismissed the severe beating he gave the young man outside the pub? He dithered a bit and said lamely...oh some like it rough I heard and well...you know.

He had to come up with a reason other than the real one--he beat up 1 and killed 2 gay men he was in a relationship with, but couldn't blame the assault on Claire, so he came up with something quickly to cover that.

The brilliance of Courtenay is if you pay attention to that amazing long close up of him delivering the story--he kind of imbues it with JUST a smidgeon if fakery...his story is just a touch too rote...and if you watch VERY closely, you can see a sense of a story he's making up that he gives us in the subtle performance.

We watch him tell the tale of the post-partum psychosis/depression, then cleverly dither that oh, you know, she NEVER got help (police can't check it); and so he tells a story carefully incorporates reasons why it can't be followed up. It was SO carefully contrived.

Then, we're treated at the end to the sadistic son, the angry and violent son. Chip off the old block. (Hint, hint, viewers.) We can also recall that throughout, he was the son who was very quiet and always acted very meek, while the other so took care of things. Wolf. Sheep's clothing.

I think the bottom line is the writer delivering to us a mass miscarriage of justice, showing the cops just got it wrong and fell for the tale....and the viewers were given enough to see that the cops were gullible.

But we the viewers were given info we needed to realize what the police did not: Eric was guilty as sin.

A different approach in a procedural.