Reviews

Review: The End of The F***ing World

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22 January 2018

By Bronwen

This week’s most raved-on-about series is Channel 4’s The End of the F***ing World starring Jessica Barden and Alex Lawther. Barden plays Alyssa, a 17-year-old girl from a broken, borderline abusive home with a lot of issues. Lawther plays James, an aspiring psychopath who selects Alyssa as the perfect victim for his first murder. Based on the comic book series by Charles Forsman, The End of the F***ing World is a dark, gruesome and overly sexual 8 part series that leaves you with more questions than answers.

Growing up in a boring suburban town, the two teenagers are dying for some excitement and quickly end up running away together, with Alyssa completely unaware of James’ plans to kill her. Of course, things don’t go smoothly at all and out of desperation, the pair resort to criminal activity to fund their escape.

The show gets very dark very quickly. There are a few instances of sexual assault and violence that make for uncomfortable viewing. James has violent and graphic fantasies of murdering Alyssa and throughout the series, there are frequent flashbacks to the murders James committed as a child, including a non-graphic scene including his neighbour’s cat.

Reviews of the show are fairly mixed. On one hand, the storyline (other than the blossoming romance) is completely unpredictable and full of twists and turns. The character development and emerging backstory of James are thought evoking and complex- his issues stem from a childhood trauma that was never dealt with properly. On the other hand, there wasn’t much of a point to the show. Two messed up teenagers run away only to meet a tragic fate after enduring several days of hellish trauma. Was the point to portray the way in which our childhoods affect everything we do in the future? Was it to show that true love will turn us mad or that we will do anything for someone we love?

The story didn’t really end either but perhaps this was deliberate to leave the option of a series 2 open. The cause of the strained relationship between the two main police officers was never revealed, we never really found out what happened to Alyssa and James and it all ended on a vague cliffhanger.

 

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