Major Showtrial spoilers follow.
With the final episode of Showtrial on the BBC, the jury gave their verdict on the question of Justin Mitchell: "mad or bad?"
Mitchell (Michael Socha) had been dead set on being unlikeable throughout the five-parter, but as details came to light of the expecting mother he watched die, his partner Elena's (Anna Próchniak) subsequent child loss and the lack of intervention from superiors in the police, the mitigating factor of his PTSD nudged away at his culpability.
Once the guilty verdict and the sentence of 35 years without parole had been delivered, Mitchell finally told solicitor Sam (Adeel Akhtar) exactly what unfolded – and what an underwhelming, unimportant twist it was.
This last-minute reveal is in Showtrial's wheelhouse, after season one ended on the tantalising possibility that the accused, Talitha, who had just been acquitted, had led everyone up the garden path and been guilty all along.
Much like in this run of episodes, a meandering slate of flashbacks provide alternate accounts of what actually happened. In season one, it revolved around who exactly had a green sparkly scarf when. In this instalment, it's all about Mitchell's frame of mind as he turned onto the narrow country road where his car knocked Marcus Calderwood (Barney Fishwick) from his bike.
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The first of these flashbacks came as Mitchell recounted his side of events from the stand. He went to Calderwood's home to confront him over another ongoing Stop Climate Genocide protest, which had blocked an ambulance from getting to the hospital.
Mitchell drove after Calderwood on his bike. He didn't know why. "I didn't want to kill him. I was angry he wouldn't listen," he told the court as the flashback unfolded.
Calderwood threw a middle finger back at Mitchell on the country lane – and in this version of events that finger effectively prompted his own murder. Mitchell put his foot down and smashed into his bike.
But, the prosecution says, this initial face off at Calderwood's home was not caught on the security cameras outside his house. So did it even happen? The prosecution's version then plays out in flashback: Mitchell's car lying in wait on the country road, pouncing, Calderwood's frightened face, the smash, ditching the body.
Once his exact days behind bars have been numbered, Mitchell at last becomes a truth teller and shares Patrick Norris's (Aidan McArdle) involvement in it all – the slightly dodgy, very wealthy vineyard owner who shared a boundary wall with Calderwood.
Another flashback shows a game of cards between Mitchell and Norris. A single bet lost by Mitchell decided he would kill Calderwood.
At least with this season of the show, we do definitively know what happened – there's no last-minute tease. But if the viewer is also the jury, was this a verdict the majority of us agreed with? Probably not.
This isn't to say Mitchell was blameless – the closing scenes stressed he didn't have a huge amount of remorse for what he did.
Yet he didn't act alone or even unprompted. The smug and clearly culpable Norris couple got away to Ecuador on a private jet, unscathed and untouched by the law, with no avenue to catching Norris as the credits roll.
This season of Showtrial didn't so much demonstrate how the media can prejudice a case, but how the arms of law enforcement and the mechanics of justice can be woolly and unsatisfying.
And the kicker? It had nothing to do with a "political execution", instead boiling down to "the smaller picture", a tree (?!) which Norris had illegally felled and Calderwood made sure he was fined for.
Ahead of the show's release, writer and creator Ben Richards said that in deciding to bring Showtrial back for a second season, they knew the case had to be "big".
"It can’t just be an ordinary murder trial, or drug-smuggling case, it has to be a big emblematic case with grit that takes the imagination of the country," Richards said. "It has to say something about the country in which we live."
With a focus on mental-health struggles, activism, the culture wars and issues within policing, the show was a whirlpool of Big Ideas. But the catalyst behind it is all reduced to a trivial neighbour disagreement, with the other, bigger problems at play unresolved or brushed under the narrative rug.
After all the modern-day issues funnelled into every character and scene of the show, the experience of watching the finale feels a bit like watching a tidal surge of water circle the drain only to drop down into nothingness.
Showtrial continues on Sundays at 9pm on BBC One, with the series also available to watch in full on BBC iPlayer.
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Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
