TV Pick of the Week: End of Summer - review by Yvette Huddleston
End of SummerBBC iPlayer, review by Yvette Huddleston
Adapted from a bestselling novel by Swedish crime writer Anders de la Motte, this compelling psychological thriller is set in two different time frames and moves back and forth between them.
We meet troubled young psychotherapist Vera (Julia Ragnarrson) in the early 2000s. She is working in Stockholm as a grief counsellor in a psychiatric hospital, leading group therapy sessions which are observed by a senior colleague. It gradually transpires that Vera is under supervision as she had to leave her previous practice due to a serious lapse in judgement – she had an inappropriate relationship with one of her patients and was sacked. She is making some headway in her rehabilitation and hoping to return to her post as long as she can convince her old boss that she has put it all behind her and can be trusted not to make such a mistake again.
Then one day a young man comes along to the bereavement counselling session and what he shares with the group seems to affect Vera in a profound way. He says that he recently found out he was adopted and he has been having partial recollections to a childhood memory about a missing person. His account has clearly triggered an upsetting memory for Vera.
We then go back 20 years to 1984 when the young Vera is living in rural Sweden on a farm with her parents and two brothers, one older, one much younger. Her family life is complicated, her farmer father is decent and hardworking but her mother treats her daughter with contempt and dotes on the youngest of the family – little Billy. When he goes missing one afternoon and is never seen again, the impact on the family is devastating. There was a suspect in the case, a local man named Tommy Rooth, but no-one was ever convicted of a crime and a body was never found. The case was reported nationally and as the 20th anniversary of Billy’s disappearance approaches, a journalist is keen to revisit the story.
Upset by this and by the encounter with the mysterious young man in the therapy session, Vera contacts her older brother who still lives in her hometown. Following their conversation she reluctantly agrees to return to there, partly to celebrate her father’s birthday, but also to try and find some answers about the past. That leads to her uncovering some long-hidden secrets.