Series Round Up: The Ice Cream Girls.

MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT! - The final episode of The Ice Cream Girls contained a pretty big twist! So, if you haven't seen the episode yet, I'd advise you not to read on as I'll be discussing the twist a lot in the following post! 

Right from the start of the series, I've been very much 'Team Poppy'; Serena, in my opinion, has this air about her which just screams 'I'm hiding something!'. I've therefore felt the pain of the injustice of Poppy's 17 year sentence, while Serena has had the idyllic life every girl dreams of. My heartbreak when Poppy was confronted with the fact that Al, her love-interest/lifeguard/general nice guy, was actually an undercover journalist looking for a big story, was tremendous. I was expecting a much more violent reaction from Poppy when she went to her flat; I must admit I was slightly disappointed when all she did was smash up his laptop. But this seems to have been a wise, deliberate decision, to convince the audience that Poppy isn't a 'murderer'.

The obvious conclusion after this revelation, therefore, was that Serena stabbed him the extra 10 times while Poppy had ran to get help. I'm sure I'm not alone in admitting this was my instinct. And despite her insistence of her innocence, something about her made me dislike her, and consequently believe she was capable of the murder of Marcus. She must be an unlikable character, as even her husband Evan and daughter Vee believed she was capable of the murder when it was shockingly revealed to them through the misjudgment of a police officer who has had an obvious 'thing' against Serena since the first episode.
A simple resolution, you may think; Poppy has her 'revenge' on Serena as she is left by her family. But this all occurred within the first half an hour of the finale episode. Which left my puzzled as to what would happen next.

So, what did happen next? A big fat twist. That's what happened. But not just any old twist: a twist within a twist. All very confusing and brilliant. After Serena visited Poppy in the detention centre, reeling with anger and with nothing to lose, it became more and more possible that there was a third, previously unknown, participant in the murder of Marcus. The script brilliantly forces the reader to assume this was Marcus's actual (adult) girlfriend of the time, Martha Riley. She has a plausible motive: she was pregnant during that summer, and had visited a law firm to try and ensure Marcus would have no paternal rights to the child due to his violent nature. As this was deemed unlikely, maybe she killed him off to protect her unborn child?

Nothing is as ever simple as that in ITV drama though, is it? Have we not learnt anything from Broadchurch?! After an anti-climactic meeting between Martha, Al, and Serena, we see Serena visiting the local law firm her sister works at, to root round some of the old files. She finds the file, and it reveals something unthinkable until that point.
The lawyer who consulted with Martha during that summer was none other than Serena's cancer-stricken mum, who seems to have not followed the correct procedure in her legal notes after she discovered the violent man in question was her daughter's tutor, Marcus. Why had she acted so out of character during this consultation? Serena seems to reach the conclusion before the audience, as we are all too dumbfounded to believe what is right in front of us. Serena's mother already had suspicions about her and Marcus, and so when she discovered he had a history of violence and rape, she followed Serena on the fatal night, hoping to (presumably) catch the pair in the act, confront Marcus and get him sacked from his post. She wasn't prepared to be confronted with Marcus slumped on the floor with a knife in his chest and neither Serena or Poppy anywhere to be seen, however.
The rest you can probably guess, but the brilliance of The Ice Cream Girls is nobody guessed it until the very end. It was the perfect crime thriller series.

The only, tiny, thing that ruined it for me, was the over-reaction of Poppy when she discovered she was free. Fainting? Really?
It just completely undermined the brilliant twist that had just been revealed, and made the show look unbelievably cheesy. My only bug-bear however! 

What did you think of the series, and 'the big twist'? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!
You can catch up on the full series on ITVplayer, here.