The Jetty Almost Had “a Completely Different Ending”

Warning: contains finale spoilers for “The Jetty”.

The pulp-fiction twist that threatens to derail new BBC crime drama “The Jetty” in its final episode would have been avoided in an earlier version of the story, star Jenna Coleman has confirmed.

Speaking to Variety, Coleman discussed how the conclusion of the four-parter evolved from her early attachment to the project, when it was just one episode and a treatment (a detailed overview of the show).

In the finale, Coleman’s character DC Ember Manning learns that the killer of 15-year-old schoolgirl Amy Knightly (Bo Bragason) has been right under her nose throughout the reopened investigation. No, it wasn’t her dead husband, or her spirit medium mother, or boss with the menacing voice played by Ralph Inneson, it was…her. She did it. Specifically, Ember accidentally knocked Amy down while illegally drug-driving aged 17, and the Rohypnol she’d taken caused her to forget the whole thing until it eventually surfaced all these years later.

“The initial ending was different – it was something to do with Caitlin,” Coleman told Variety. Caitlin (Laura Marcus) is a schoolgirl who was groomed by Amy and her 26-year-old boyfriend Mack into having underage sex with Mack’s brother, in exchange for him not reporting Mack to the police for statutory rape. She was in love with Amy, who manipulated Caitlin using her attraction to her and shame over her sexuality. It’s easy to imagine a scenario in which Caitlin was the one driving that night, or her accidentally causing Amy’s death in a fight.

That fate was avoided for Caitlin though, by writer Cat Jones, and perhaps wisely. Lesbian characters on television have a long history of unhappy endings, and Caitlin’s reinvention of herself as a successful, out academic named Kit who finally reunites with her estranged parents is one of The Jetty finale’s most satisfying elements.

Instead, Ember was made responsible for Amy’s death, turning the series in part into an exploration of repressed memory and past trauma. However, having realised the truth, Ember chooses not to confess to crime. With Kit’s sort-of blessing and in the knowledge of her mother and daughter, Ember pins the accidental hit-and-run on Arj (Matthew McNulty), the man who’d helped Mack to hide Amy’s body 17 years earlier and kept quiet ever since, wrongly believing himself responsible for her death. Arj also strangled podcaster Riz (Weruche Opia), and choked Ember until she was unconscious before attempting to kill himself and her. Luckily, she regained consciousness and escaped in time to watch him set himself on fire.

Ember naming Arj as the killer wasn’t the only version of that ending either, Coleman told Variety. “…we actually shot two versions of the prison cell scene where she admits or doesn’t admit it, so it was very much left to the edit what to do with it. There was a couple of different ways it could go.”

In the other version of the ending they filmed, Ember “basically didn’t speak”, explained Coleman. “The assumption was made [by the detectives] and she never corrected it, as opposed to the words coming out of her mouth. But the version that we had on paper was her saying those words. Again, I think it’s about sitting in that uncomfortable space and there being no easy answers.”

The Jetty is available to stream on BBC iPlayer in the UK