Liar, series 1 finale: the truth may be out but did Andrew get what he deserved?

Well, phew. The knuckle-gnawing, knife-edge denouement of ITV’s six-part psychological thriller aired on Monday night, leaving viewers emotionally wrung out and full of questions. 

Who killed Andrew Earlham?

You just knew they would use that stunning, almost alien-looking Essex coastal location one last time. The series climaxed with an aerial camera slowly gliding over Tollesbury marshes, inexorably closing in on the corpse of suave surgeon Dr Andrew Earlham (Ioan Gruffudd), sprawled in shallow water with his throat slit. It was a stylishly dark, cinematically shot note on which to bow out.

So who dispensed the monstrous doctor’s just desserts? There were plenty with motive. Sickeningly, Earlham had drugged and raped at least 17 women, including the three we met during this series: heroine Laura Nielson (Joanne Froggatt), cop DI Vanessa Harmon (Shelley Conn) and his late wife’s friend Catherine (Dawn Steele).

However, Ness played by the book, Laura wanted legal justice and Catherine wasn’t sighted this week. Instead, the likely culprit looked to be Ness’s soldier girlfriend Jennifer (Jill Halfpenny). Just back from a tour in Iraq, she was aghast that she hadn’t been around to protect pregnant Ness – and certainly had the skills to hunt Andrew down and exact revenge.

Sure, it could have been Laura’s ex Tom (Warren Brown), who lost his police job after Andrew’s complaints against him. Or even Andrew’s own son Luke (Jamie Flatters), who was looking suitably teen-angsty and messed-up by the time the credits rolled. 

In the context of this story, though, it was only right a woman should take control, rather than a man riding to the rescue. Chances are, then, that it was indeed the self-styled “GI Jen”. Let’s just hope she gets away with it.

Was it a satisfying resolution?

Almost but not quite. Andrew wasn’t untouchable, as he arrogantly believed, and got his comeuppance in the most brutal way possible. OK, we never watched him answer to his crimes in a court of law. Instead, justice of the old-fashioned kind was served.

The twisted psycho was ultimately tripped up by that stash of damning evidence – vials of GHB and camcorder memory cards – in his mother’s shed. When he heard that maverick-on-a-mission Laura had found the incriminating holdall and taken it to police, Andrew realised the game was up. 

It initially seemed the slippery surgeon had gone on the run, as three weeks later, he was still a wanted man. So it was a strange sort of relief when the camera zoomed down on his glassy-eyed cadaver (just me or did he still look slightly smug, even in death?). What we don’t know was who killed him, how he got to the marshes and when his body will be discovered – doubtless by a dog-walker. It’s always a dog-walker in TV drama.

As Froggatt recently promised, we weren’t left on one of those frustratingly open-ended cliffhangers. Yet there were enough plot holes and loose ends to mean it wasn’t entirely satisfying. No doubt some of this was deliberate ambiguity but other elements felt rushed and muddled. The women in the story – particularly Laura and Ness – were left in a kind of traumatised limbo. Perhaps, sadly, that’s all too realistic. 

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Why were the police so ineffectual?

It was a neat twist when Andrew’s latest girlfriend-cum-target Charlotte (Laura Aikman) turned out to be an undercover cop – although her investigative methods had the strong whiff of entrapment. When she promptly blew the operation by being caught with a syringe in her wine glass, it was just the latest in a string of police bungles.

The glaring oversight in this finale was why on earth they hadn’t searched Andrew’s mother’s house and left it to amateur sleuth Laura? The security tracker on Andrew's car would show he stopped off at Sylvia’s after each attack. When it was suspected that he kept recordings of his rapes so he could relive them, why didn’t detectives retrace his steps and comb his haunts?

One would also have thought that the three-week police manhunt for a fugitive rapist would cover the local marshes, which Laura visited almost daily and where Andrew had also been sighted.  

The CPS declining to prosecute Andrew was sadly believable, though. It reflects the grim predicament faced by rape victims in the UK, where only a shamefully low proportion of allegations lead to convictions (just 7.5 per cent last year, in fact).

Why didn’t Andrew intercept Laura?

One of the least satisfying aspects of this finale was that rather lame sequence when Laura found the pivotal evidence. Strolling in and out of Andrew’s mother’s house felt far too easy, especially after they’d had that creepy phone conversation as he lurked threateningly outside her flat. 

His mother’s carer Mia was shown phoning Andrew to warn him, setting it up for him to hop into his flash motor and speed across town in a desperate bid to head off Laura and save his skin. Tension was ramped up – then didn’t go anywhere. We never got to see Andrew’s reaction to finally being rumbled. There was no climactic confrontation between the two antagonists. It all fell flat and distinctly damp squibbish.

What next for the characters?

Liar explored the devastating cost of deceit – not just on top-billed adversaries Andrew and Laura but on their friends and family. As ripples spread outwards from that fateful night, all manner of secrets and lies came to light.

Ness and Jen were still together, albeit with a gap on the sofa between them. Policeman Tom, fired from the force, was last seen looking rather lost. His affair with Laura’s sister Katie (Zoë Tapper) was uncovered last week and it was Katie who suffered most in this finale: husband Liam (Richie Campbell) couldn’t forgive her, she’d lost custody of their children and her relationship with Laura was fractured, possibly irretrievably. 

Andrew’s troubled teenage son Luke was also left in a bad place. Not only was his father unmasked as a serial rapist but he’d manipulated Luke into providing a false alibi. Well, Andrew did repeatedly call his son “mate” – always the sign of a wrong’un, as we saw recently in Doctor Foster. 

Pleasingly, Laura was the character left with most cause for optimism. There were hopeful signs of romance with her likeable suitor Ian (Kieran Bew) from their Edinburgh hotel. He was coming down to Kent for a weekly, sweetly chaste date. As long as he lets Laura get the drinks, they might just have a future. 

Was the series a success?

Ratings-wise, yes. It pulled in 6m viewers, rising to 8m when catch-ups and recordings were taken into account. It trounced screenwriting siblings Harry and Jack Williams' other current series, tricksy whodunit-in-reverse Rellik, which was scheduled against Liar over on BBC One and had confused viewers tuning out in droves.

Critically, Liar was more of a mixed bag. There were inconsistencies, implausibilities and twists too far. At times, it was carried by the superlative performances – not just of leads Gruffudd and Froggatt but also of Brown and Conn. 

In fact, this was a reminder of why Gruffudd really should be far more famous. He was great as Horatio Hornblower and in the early Noughties films, then seemed to disappear for the best part of a decade – which his actress wife Alice Evans believes was down to Harvey Weinstein scuppering the couple’s careers after she rejected the disgraced mogul’s advances. 

For all its faults, though, Liar undoubtedly gripped to the last and was edge-of-the-sofa stuff. We’d rate it a seven out of 10 series. 

Should there be a series two?

Just as the credit rolled and curtain came down, ITV announced that Liar will indeed return for a second series, as suspected. The new run will focus on who murdered Andrew Earlham and star the same cast, including Ioan Gruffudd. Presumably it will flash back to cover that mysterious three weeks when he was missing, culminating in his death. 

In terms of the narrative, a follow-up certainly wasn't absolutely essential. This story has finished. The villain is dead. The victims don’t have closure but certainly no further misery should be heaped upon poor Laura. However, where there are ratings (Liar has been ITV’s most watched new drama of 2017), there usually tends to be a recommission. So it has proved. 

The only unresolved plotline was who killed Andrew, so that's what will kickstart the second and, we're told, final chapter. Is it enough? I fear "Broadchurch series two" or "The Fall series three" syndrome but fingers crossed the Williams brothers can surprise us. Watch this space. And watch your wine glass too.