DRAMA | THE END OF THE F * * * I NG WORLD
T he first series of The End of the F***ing World ended with Alyssa and James capping off their increasingly high-risk crime spree by running away from a firearms unit, ending up on a beach. Once there, James urges Alyssa to tell the police he kidnapped her, and that she committed all of the offences against her own will. He then hits her with a rifle – immobilising her long enough for the police to catch her – and makes a run for it towards the ocean. Everything that follows suggests James has been killed by the police, and fans have spent the last two years theorising whether or not it was really the end. Well, now we know, and James is of course alive, but is by no means kicking. He is crippled, orphaned and estranged from Alyssa, who is engaged to someone else. In their separate worlds, they each receive a bullet with their name engraved into the metal. The bullets are sent by newcomer Bonnie, who was in love with Clive, the professor by day, serial killer by night who was murdered by James to protect Alyssa. The opening episode of the second series is dedicated to Bonnie’s pitch-black backstory. She was raised under the cruel discipline of her mother who forces her to memorise the world’s capital cities and eat lipstick. She then rebels by rejecting the education she was supposed to have and becomes a librarian at a college, where she meets and becomes lovesick for the enigmatic professor Clive. This episode, especially the scenes where Bonnie meets with Clive at his murder house, was “mind-boggling” for Benedict Spence – the DOP carrying the cinematography baton on from the first series’ DOP Justin Brown – to shoot. The scenes are set in the past, in parallel to when Alyssa and James entered his house in Series 1. He explains: “They’re meant to look as if they could have been plucked from the first series.” WHAT THE F**K AM I LOOKING AT? Spence was tasked with the heavy responsibility of continuing the look that
ABOVE James and Alyssa allow a women bent on murdering them – the wild-eyed Bonnie – on to their wistful road trip
30 DEF I N I T ION | JANUARY 2020
Powered by FlippingBook