The End of the F***ing World

When The End of the F***ing World (Channel 4) first aired in 2017, it was a slow burn that crackled into life and became a vibrant hit. Though it was largely missed when it first appeared on television, it picked up an international audience a year later on Netflix. In a world of prestige television, it ploughed its own furrow and did things its own way. Its episodes were compact and lean, its over-the-top style paid homage to its graphic novel heritage while maintaining a particular dourness, and its True Romance-esque central love story was far more sweet than its violent setting should have allowed for, given that it started with James deciding to kill Alyssa, and ended with him laid out on a beach having sacrificed himself for her.End of the Fucking World Season 1-2.

It also seemed like a watertight story, relatively un-sequel-able (though in the name of Big Little Lies, we should have learned by now that a neat ending is unlikely to stop a success in its tracks.) So here we are, with series two, and a request that reviewers do not give anything away, which makes certain aspects of it tricky to discuss. Even so, there is enough of a shift to see how this will work just as well as its predecessor. The first series saw the duo’s runaway road trip ending in Thelma and Louise-ish abandon, as the police caught up with their crimes. Series two’s opening episode (there are eight, stripped across the week in pairs) moves away from the two of them almost entirely, giving us the pitch-black story of Bonnie, via an excellent, career-making performance from Naomi Ackie, who stood out similarly in 2016’s Lady Macbeth.