Am I alone??


I am no rocket scientist but am fairly intelligent. However, am I alone in not knowing what the hell was going on in this 8 parter?

I enjoyed the acting and have always had a soft spot for Anna Friel, but can not tell you the premise of this show.

I just need some reassurance from a normal person like me that they too were totally baffled by the plot.

Thanks.

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You are alone.

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I would love to see that group of flawed but awesome detectives on more seasons.

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Definitely NOT alone. I would have classified myself as of at least average intelligence until I started watching this. Now I am questioning that.

For one thing there are too many characters and subplots. A bit confusing but I like it. If I recommended it to someone and they asked me for a synopsis I'm not sure I could help them.

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No, you certainly are NOT alone! The plot was hard to follow. It reminded me a bit of 'The Usual Suspects' that you had to watch twice to get the drift. Is Marcella supposed to be crazy? I wouldn't want to be around her when she lost it.

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If it wasn't for The Guardian's recaps, I would have been totally lost. I had trouble keeping track of the characters and figuring out their relevance to the main plot.

After Marcella's black-outs early on, I wondered if SHE was being set up as the serial killer...and that initial shot of Jason on the floor with the bag over his head made me think "oh no, the show's going there!" - but just for a moment

It's funny, I watched the whole series but am not sure if I enjoyed it or not...if that makes sense!

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This is probably the most complex mystery I've ever seen, due to multiple crimes by different people muddying the waters, as well as lots of red herrings about the original killing.

(I was able to follow the plot better than some, perhaps, because I binge watched the whole series at one time ;)

Apparently Henry was copy-catting the original bag killer, expecting his murders to pass as being done by the original killer. His target was Grace, and he killed others to make it seem like she was one of many victims of a serial killer, so the police wouldn't look too carefully at who had motive to kill Grace. He set up his friend, because, as he said, he was the only person he knew well enough to frame.

When Marcella moved the body, the police knew the friend could not have done it, due to a back injury, so either he was innocent, or he had an accomplice. Also, the hairs from the hairbrush initially framed his friend's roommate/lover, because they used the same hairbrush, so that was another monkey wrench in his plans, especially as it showed that the hairs were planted for the DNA evidence. The roommate/lover was another red herring, because he was obviously upset and jealous about the relationship of his lover with the killer. After his arrest, he was rather inarticulate and acting bizarrely, but Marcella ruled him out because his panic attack in prison showed he didn't have the right temperament to be the killer. That gay couple were the IT guys who were connected because one was the killer's "framee," and they also worked for the lady running the online "bordello" that the blonde sex worker worked for when she was threatened by the killer for having stolen something from him. Her sideline was picking up guys that were cheating on their wives and robbing them while they slept, so apparently she had slept with the killer and made off with his trophy from Grace (the cocaine filled pendant) that he had intended to plant on his friend. Instead, she had given it to her roommate as a birthday gift, claiming it wasn't one of the things she had stolen. Apparently neither of them knew it was filled with cocaine until an undercover cop saw the guy who was with the roommate outside the nightclub take a snort out of it. That was how it came into the possession of the police. When Marcella found a photo of Grace that showed her wearing it, she knew she herself could not have been Grace's killer.

Apparently Marcella moved the body because she thought she herself had killed Grace during one of her blackouts. She was either still having the same blackout or a new one when she moved the body, as it wasn't a clear memory.

The killing of the building inspector was a separate crime, but linked to Marcella's husband, because he was playing hardball to get his job back after the discovery of his relationship with Grace got him fired. Apparently he wanted his fixer to get dirt on the guy, but didn't realize "take care of it," meant something altogether different to his fixer, who had his own issues with M.S. and was desperate for money for his wife. I'm not clear on how the immigrant type who was rooming with him and his wife fit in, but he somehow got pictures to blackmail Marcella's husband, and thus the fixer. I don't know if that guy died accidentally during an auto-erotic event, or if the fixer killed him, or somehow Henry found out and killed him. (The auto-erotic thing is that supposedly having one's oxygen supply reduced increases pleasure or the strength of an orgasm.) The fixer was shown looking for the blackmail money from Marcella's husband he had given the guy, but I didn't see him find it. That suggests he didn't kill the guy, because he probably would have looked for the money immediately, rather than wait till the cops removed the body. (Grace's killer didn't want the building inspector killed, because his chance to shine with Grace's mother meant saving the project by including some of the original green space agreed upon, but also including some of the other profitable parts, so they still made good money.)

Marcella managed to catch the original killer, which was her own investigation, rather than the investigation of Grace's murder, which added to the confusion, especially as she almost got killed herself trying to rescue the journalist who had been interviewing him. He was one of the original red herrings, because we found out that he was being left on his own at times while on work furlough from prison when he was supposed to be supervised by his employer, which meant neither one of them had an alibi for those times.

The cabbie and his brother were a side plot, but Marcella first was told he was asleep and didn't see anything. Then after he conferred with his brother, who was the one actually driving that taxi (while he drove another at the same time -- the brother was there illegally) he passed on that "he" had seen a woman putting something heavy in a car. Marcella realizes he had seen her move the body, and at first thinks he is trying to blackmail her. When she realizes he isn't, she simply doesn't pass on the information, because it would incriminate her. After the cabbie is shot, the brother comes and threatens her to make her confess. She has a blackout, so we don't see how that plays out, other than that she told him she didn't kill anybody, so apparently he believed her. It seems likely that Henry killed the cabbie, but it's not clear how he would have known the cabbie could have been a witness to his arriving at and/or departing from Grace's.

The child was murdered because she apparently woke up and witnessed the killer leaving the home of the lady that sometimes babysat her. The killer killed that woman because she was somehow connected to his "friend" that he was framing.

So, Grace's half brother killed her because he thought her mother would never take him seriously and give him a chance at the company as long as she was alive. With her dead, he becomes the mother's connection to Grace, especially as he named the new project "Grace Tower." All the other victims were collateral damage to help cover up the motive for Grace's killing. However, it was the murder of the child that was the killer's undoing, because she bit him on the shoulder when he was abducting her. They didn't say they found his DNA in her teeth, probably because she died face down in a puddle, but the mark matched her teeth, as she was missing a front incisor, and there was also something about one of her molars that I didn't catch.

Hope this helps.

Semper Contendere Propter Amoram et Formam

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Yes! I feel like I need to watch it again to understand everything.

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I watch each episode at night with my wife, then the next day I watch each one again while I eat lunch. After two viewings I begin to grasp what is going on.

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