Crickley Hall closes it doors with a fantastic final episode.
The Secret Of Crickley Hall comes to a satisfying and thrilling end as the mysteries are solved. Psychic Lili Peel (Susan Lynch) has received news from the ghost of Augustus that Cam had drowned and when the police find a body, Gabe (Tom Ellis) goes to identify it. At this point I wasn’t convinced it would be him as although this series has been quite dark I thought it would end happily for the Caleigh family. However it is him and his death is unrelated to the ghostly goings on at Crickley as I had wrongly thought.
Gordon Pyke (Donald Sumpter) is staying at the house who is actually Maurice Stafford one of the orphans that lived at Crickley Hall. He also killed Nancy after she discovered his relationship with Magda Cribben (Sarah Smart) so after we see Gabe leaving we know that Eve, Loren and Cally are in trouble. Donald Sumpter makes a great villan, blank faced and desperate to carry out his orders to get some peace. The scenes where Maurice speaks to Augustus and is thrashed several times into subservience makes you feel a little sympathy for him. He drugs Eve, sending her to sleep and then sets out to get Loren and Cally to satisfy Augustus. In most chase scenes some poor unfortunate falls and hurts their ankle and that’s exactly what happens to Loren. Maurice takes her to the cellar, the scene of his last act of murder and tries to throw her down the well. Gabe arrives just in time but the voice of Nancy comes from the bottom of the well and a horrific looking corpse pulls him down to his death. The sweet voice of Nancy and the sight of that corpse was quite disturbing.
Back in 1943 we find out the true nature of the orphans death. After Augustus (Douglas Henshall) is found out by the vicar he goes to commit suicide but reconsiders and gases the orphans in the cellar. All of them except one however. Stefan, the bane of Augustus’ life whom he takes most of his anger out on. Stefan get’s revenge on the man who abused him by knocking him over the banister and using his cane to make him fall to the hard ground. Two villains get their comeuppance, Maurice almost in the same way as his victim, Nancy and Augustus in the same way he hurt the children. Stefan goes on to live a good life with a loving family thanks to Percy, which provides a happier ending than all the other characters have.
Closure is provided for Percy (David Warner) as he finally finds out what happened to Nancy and Eve and Gabe can stop living their lives uncertain of their son’s fate and try to move on. The strength of this series has definitely been the cast, with Suranne Jones, Tom Ellis, Pixie Davies and Maisie Williams as the Caleigh’s having plenty of believable and touching family moments. Douglas Henshall and Sarah Smart where both terrifying as the Cribbens and Olivia Cooke and Iain De Caestecker made great foils for them, trying to rescue the children. Although it dealt with some dark themes, abuse, bereavement, murder it was never depressing. Overall a very enjoyable series.
