'Back to Life' Season 1 finale reveals Mandy lied about affair with Lara’s father, leading her to attack Miri 18 years ago
A good finale always neatly ties up everything. It provides a feeling of catharsis. It makes you smile. And the finale of ‘Back to Life’ season 1 is a good finale.
The show that revolves around former convict Miri Matteson’s (Daisy Haggard) journey to find normalcy outside the walls of prison ended like a wave -- Emotions reached a critical mass and crashed. And then, for the briefest of moments, there was a calm.
In episode 6, we see a lot of questions answered. Like, why did Miri’s former boss Nathan (Liam Williams) falsely claim to the police that she was about to do something dangerous?
When the cops found that Nathan’s fish and chips truck was lit on fire, they arrested Miri. It turned out that Nathan had only done so to get the insurance money. He apologized to Miri about it.
The episode also revealed who the enigmatic “investigator” was. It turned out that he was a private detective, who had taken it upon himself to find out why Miri had killed her best friend Lara, the reason why she was sent to prison.
It was he who bailed Miri out and told her he had discovered what led to the killing. According to him, Miri was having an affair with Lara’s father. Angry about that, Lara bit Miri that led her to push her and she died falling off a cliff. Miri denied the affair and left.
The episode also saw Miri finding out about her mother Caroline’s (Geraldine James’) affair with her ex-boyfriend Dom (Jamie Michie), leading her to shout at her mother in a fit of anger, that continued to the community meeting where the townsfolk were discussing what to do with Miri.
When Miri arrived and tried to explain that she was not a bad person -- some people believed she, since her release from prison, had killed her neighbor and was connected to another murder and had joined ISIS -- they began shouting at her.
At that point her friend Mandy (Christine Bottomley) came to her rescue, following which there was a flurry of confessions: Caroline confessed to her affair, Miri’s father Oscar (Richard Durden) confessed to having chlamydia and Dom confessed to having given several people chlamydia, and that is also where Nathan confessed to his crime.
But when Miri, in the flow of things, clarified she had never slept with Lara’s father, Dom said he had heard the rumor that it was, in fact, Mandy who was the one sleeping with him. An angry Miri confronted her and Mandy finally confessed: She was having an affair and that she had told Lara it was Miri who was sleeping with her father.
Miri realized that all of this had been for nothing. Had Mandy never lied, Lara wouldn’t have attacked her. And had that not happened, Miri wouldn't have pushed her, something that led to her death.
But where there was anger, there was also a catharsis. At the beginning of the episode, when Miri found her home vandalized once again, she noticed her neighbor Billy (Adeel Akhtar), who she liked.
Billy’s car had been vandalized as well, because of his proximity to Miri -- someone had spray-painted “I s**g sychos (sic)” on it. Billy told Miri they would never hang out again.
At the end of the episode, however, when Miri was sitting alone on the beach, saddened by the sheer futility of everything, Billy arrived with two ice cream cones and comforted her. The episode and the season ended on a hopeful note: Things were not as bad as they seemed. Miri still had a chance to find happiness.