Only 2 days until the Clean Break series finale!!
How will it all end?!?!?!

Well, that's it then!  Overall Clean Break was good.  Gripping mystery throughout.  But this time I didn't vote for Excellent because the ending was less than satisfactory.

I am not sure what I was expecting with Clean Break but I was pleasantly surprised on several levels - and I will try to do this without plot spoilers...

1. The writing was superb, a masterfully woven story from beginning to end. I said this in the feature on the fansite yesterday, but it is no easy trick to get the balance right between suspense and keeping us constantly up close engaged - Clean Break achieved that with bells on. The suspense was intense and the series arch was brilliantly compelling.

2. The cinematography (again apologies for repeating myself all over the place) was stunning and raised the quality of the drama even higher. It brought the town into the drama, there was such an evocative beauty to it and it 'spoke', it was the backdrop to the story and, along with the soundtrack and it's recurring theme, made the tone, which was mysterious, melancholy, grim, increasingly chilling.

3. The performances and the talent - standout for me were the young people, especially Amybeth McNulty (Jenny) there is a young talent with a bright future! Also Adam Fergus as Frank especially in the later episodes when he was increasingly out of his depth (Frank not Adam) and have to give it to Aidan McArdle for creating that creepy vibe in Desmond.. I didn't like the character, at all, but his performance was actually very subtle at bringing that coldness which we sensed straight away but had no clues until later on. Ned Dennehy played a brilliant villain and had some of the funniest lines!

And last but by no means least....

4. Danny Dempsey! Biased obvs, but bias aside, I did find Danny the most compelling and fascinating character. He is the one i wanted to know more about right from the start and the one I was most invested in (

Spoiler

not being caught not being killed

) but at the same time he is such a multi layered character, not at all black and white in terms of his history or his present day actions..

He was, in contrast to the others, the least villainous and showed himself, repeatedly, to be instinctively kind and morally 'good', but there are shades of something else that make it less clear cut. He is strong but vulnerable, stands his ground but is weak in the face of temptation, he makes choices that help but also indirectly hurt people,.. he is the one who at the beginning wants to make a clean break from his past but just cannot get one.. and I am not sure he truly makes one in the end either...is he a victim of circumstances or his own worse enemy? he is the most ambiguous, there are so many layers to the answers to that question...  The whole 'hero' or not subtext that ran though his story became more overt as time went on and there never was a finite answer to that question either (in my mind) (trying not to give spoilers here)(may continue with this in the private clean break chat room) 

In short, a compelling, fascinating character brought to life by an engaging and nuanced performance from Damien. He plays Angsty and conflicted so. very. well. While watching I was imagining another actor in that role to help me try to understand exactly what it is Damien does to take those kind of characters to the extra level. It is hard to describe but the watching experience is a felt one, there is an authenticity and expressivity to his acting that goes deep. You can't see him acting. It is just a pure, mainline experience direct to the heart and soul.

 

I actually find the ending quite clever, with enough resolved and enough unresolved for there to be more.