Everyone is severely disappointed by the Line of Duty finale, but do you know how BBC’s Byker Grove ended?
After waiting two years for Series 6, a staggering 12.8 million people tuned into the finale of the BBC drama Line of Duty on Sunday night, eagerly waiting to find out how the series would end.
However, the long-awaited finale hasn’t had a great reaction from fans, and people across the country have been left hugely disappointed by the underwhelming episode.
Amid the backlash, a tweet has gone viral claiming that the episode was nowhere near as disappointing as the ending to the 1980s teen series Byker Grove, but how did that end? Let’s revisit the show’s final episode.
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What is Byker Grove?
Byker Grove is a British teen drama series based in Newcastle that aired on CBBC from 1989 to 2006.
The show was set in a youth club in the Byker district of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, England, and starred Ant McPartlin and Dec Donnelly as characters P.J. and Duncan.
Written by Adele Jones, it was aimed at older teenagers and often addressed some serious and sometimes controversial topics.
How did it end?
After 18 series’, the show ended in 2006, and its ending was met with a lot of criticism.
The episode was titled ‘Deux Ex Machina’ which is the name of a plot mechanism often used in storytelling that resolves a seemingly unsolvable problem using an abrupt or unlikely occurrence.
In the finale, everyone in the Grove realises that they were actually just made-up characters in a TV show and that their whole world is controlled by ‘The Writers’ who plan to demolish the Grove.
They are all then given a piece of paper to write their own ending, but they soon realise that the Grove is disappearing into a void, and someone must buy it in order to save it.
Eventually, after they are all attacked by a full-size T-Rex, Stumpy finds some buried treasure and uses it to buy the Grove, essentially saving it and everyone within it.
But, just as it seems like the day has been saved, we discover that the whole place had been rigged with dynamite, and the Grove blows up, presumably killing everyone.
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The Byker Grove ending was worse than Line of Duty
As people continue to complain about the Line of Duty finale, others are reminding them that no TV show finale will ever be stranger and more disappointing than that of Byker Grove.
One person tweeted: “Anyone complaining about the Line of Duty finale should remember that after 18 years Byker Grove ended with all the characters becoming aware they were in a TV show with no free will of their own, fending off a T.Rex attack and ultimately being blasted into a void of nothingness.”
“Anyone complaining about the Line of Duty finale should immediately google how the Byker Grove writers chose to end its 18-year run. (Spoiler: there’s a f****** dinosaur),” wrote another.