Did you guess which one was mad? A satisfyingly sane finale to a bonkers ride
IN A masterpiece of ambiguity, The Replacement (BBC 1) kept us guessing whether it was maternitycover architect Paula (Vicky McClure) or new mother Ellen (Morven Christie) who was the more deranged.
Just as we thought we’d worked it out, the pendulum would swing the other way.
During last night’s climactic episode, Paula of the unblinking eyes, her movements as rigid and cold as a block of stone, was conducting job interviews. ‘Some people find this office a bit claustrophobic,’ she said blandly. What she meant was: You don’t have to be mad to work here, but don’t expect any promotion if you’re sane.
Spoiler alert... anyone who is planning to watch this on iPlayer should save this review for later.
At the beginning of this final part, it seemed Ellen was a heartless, obsessive bundle of nightmare hormones. She had hired Paula to cover her maternity leave, then accused her of stealing her job and murdering their boss, Kay.
But suddenly Paula revealed that she had been lying about the existence of her own daughter, and, in truth, the girl had been killed years ago by a hit-and-run driver, although Paula pretended she was still alive because she couldn’t bear the world’s pity.
Not surprisingly, this arch-plotter seemed not only to win the sympathy of her colleagues and the police who were still investigating her boss’s suspicious death, but even that of viewers who empathised with Paula’s plight. For her part, a hardened Ellen still hated her. ‘She’s a lunatic,’ she declared.
As a new mother finding herself usurped by her stand-in at work, she felt isolated from everyone.
This was brilliantly conveyed by one scene in the Glasgow office.
Having returned to work just weeks after her daughter’s birth, she was sitting behind the fulllength windows of her office cubicle, watching her colleagues talking about her and sharing furtive glances. But yet again, the drama cleverly reversed our view of the two women.
At the grand opening of a library whose design had been Ellen’s brainchild, Paula theatrically threw herself down a flight of stairs and accused Ellen of pushing her.
All the talk about ‘coping mechanisms’ and ‘displaced grief’ couldn’t explain away this one.
But after this shocking scene, the plot started going slightly mad itself.
For a number of reasons, social services had given custody of Ellen’s baby to her estranged and increasingly distraught husband.
Meanwhile, the drama turned to the circumstances of Paula’s lost daughter. We learned that she had been mown down by another woman architect in the hit-andrun, but police had let off the killer with a caution because her own daughter was poorly.
By now, the storyline was running helter-skelter out of control: Paula stealing Ellen’s baby from a carrycot that was sitting on a firstfloor balcony and then arranging to meet Ellen for a showdown.
The dramatic denouement took place in a car inside a lock-up garage. Evil Paula played the sound of a crying baby over her phone, and promised that she’d lead Ellen to her kidnapped baby... if Ellen swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills first. Instead of screaming for the police, or fighting Paula for the car keys, Ellen agreed to kill herself with the tablets.
At this point, the story wasn’t so much odd as stark raving bonkers. Whole pages of the script deserved their own straitjackets.
Ellen regained consciousness and – showing remarkable mechanical skills – escaped from the vehicle by hot-wiring an airbag to explode through the windscreen. Even Tom Cruise’s action superhero in Mission: Impossible would scratch his head and wonder if that was strictly possible.
None of this spoiled my enjoyment. It didn’t matter that, after Paula confessed to the murder of their boss, police decided to take her to the library where the killing had happened and where she had hidden the baby before arresting her in front of Ellen. By now we expected this kind of barminess and would be disappointed by its absence. For three weeks we’ve been asking ourselves which woman was the mad one – now we knew.
And The Replacement delivered a satisfyingly sane ending, with an ambiguous twist, as Ellen refused to give her snivelling ex-husband a second chance and devoted herself to being a single mum.
But in the final moments, we saw her boss walking towards her. He confessed he’d always loved her. Were they a couple now? Or was he stalking her? You, too, will drive yourself mad wondering...