Bonnie and Clyde eat your heart out! To catch you up to speed End of the F***ing World, series 1 focused around James (Alex Lawther) and Alyssa (Jessica Barden) who are misfits who meet at school. James introduces himself as a psychopath, whilst Alyssa broken home feeds into her angsty teenage attitude. The troublesome pair runaway, travelling in James’ dad’s stolen car. Alyssa wants to escape and find her biological dad and live with him, whilst “lover” James is along for the ride, because he wants to kill someone, and that someone is Alyssa.
On their bumpy journey the lovers break into a house to stay the night, however Professor Clive Koch (Jonathan Aris) who owns the house returns, finding Alyssa in his bed he attempt to sexually assault her until James smashes him over the head and ends up killing him. The frame the murder as a suicide as the Professor has a collection of photographs of women bound and gaged accompanied with videos of their rape.
Now on the run from the law, Alyssa and James rush to find Alyssa’s dad, but when they do it is revealed he is a drug-dealer who has a second child and rung the police to tell them of the couple’s whereabouts. The series ends with the police shooting James down…
Now you are up to date!
Series 2 picks up 2 years after series 1. James is in hospital after being shot, Alyssa’s mum, Gwen, visits him and makes him write a letter to break Alyssa’s heart so that she can move on. Subsequently, Alyssa and her mum move away and lives with Gwen’s sister, where Alyssa works in a diner (some would say that’s karma from series 1) and meets Josh who through boredom plans to marry. That is until James visits and stalks Alyssa.
Alyssa and James elope on an adventure, however these troubled lovers run into Bonnie (Naomi Ackie) , who has a vengeance against them since they killed her lover, Professor Koch, in series 1. Alyssa who is traumatised by the events in series 1, after her near rape and death by Professor Koch, series 2 focused on her PTSD after the assault in her daily life. Its fair to say that series 2 takes the perspective of Alyssa, rather than series 1 which focused on James’ depression and loss of his mother. Later, it is revealed that Bonnie is a past lover of the Professor but was manipulated by him. Alyssa and James are haunted by the tragic events from series one and Bonnie’s connection shares this pain between the trio.
The series is a great binge watch. Very neo-western vibes. Similar to series one, however arguably Alyssa is a lot more settled and more emotional and James less psychotic killer and more awkward lover boy. For this reason, I prefer series 1 for its more punchy and unexpected character moments. Having said that it is nice to see their stories continue and conclude.
FUN FACT: When it was my 16th birthday I went on set for the pilot of End of The F***ing World and meet Jonathan Entwistle. I was acting at college and they were filming near us in Kent, so a group of us were asked to be extras. The pilot was for Film 4 and the original James was cast as Craig Roberts, who was a sweetheart and spoke to us all so nicely, unlike Jessica Barden who was nasty… Maybe it proves the good casting, or we caught her at a bad time, or she was just very in character!
End of the F***ing World series 2 has some deep roots and comes away from the childish naivety that made series 1 so endearing, and instead is more straight-forward adult drama. For me it lost its touch, although the style makes the programmes so unique, the essence of what made series 1 so magical was not carried over to this series. EOTFW Series 2 is dark, troubled and emotional.
Avaliable on All4 and Netflix.
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