The Cry

[FanciedAChangeToday]

Cant see another thread - anyone watching?

Reading The Mirror summary I think they should have stuck closer to the book in making the series. It makes more sense.
What had the politicians daughter done that Alastair had 'hidden' from the public ?

Just checking back in to say I enjoyed the whole series. It is different to the book, and I also enjoyed reading that too.

The husband was acted superbly, he really gave the controlling character life and I certainly believed it.

Now roll on The little Drummer Girl.

Some great Sunday night viewing from the BBC.

Did anyone else find the first 3 episodes amazing but the last one totally underwhelming? There was so much I would have liked them to go deeper into eg
-Do the public ever get to know the full story and if so what is the reaction? Why did Jo not get in trouble for covering up the baby’s death if she told the truth?
-Why did Alistair suddenly want Chloe back at that time if he’d not been bothered before? Does he still want her back when the couple return to Scotland?
-The relationship between Alistair and his mum - does she love him, suspect he is evil, take Jo’s side or what?
-Nothing further mentioned about the police investigation, the online forums etc
-Jo realising that Alistair is controlling her and using similar behaviour towards him - hinted at but not properly explored.
-Why does Jo find contentment/closure in the house where her baby is buried underneath? Wouldn’t it cause distress to realise that your baby was under a building site?
-The two faces thing, not explained at all. Wouldn’t it ring alarm bells with a psychologist if a patient said that?
-What was the point of the Scottish friend?

• why did Alistair suddenly fess up to Jo when he is usually a quick thinking liar? Surely what he did was terrible but it wasn’t a cold blooded murder so did he really deserve to die for it?

What was the point of the shack scene? Or the bush fire? Etc etc

Could antibiotics (her medicine in the book) actually kill a baby?

Could someone pm me the book spoiler, please?

I did enjoy it, and thought it had a better ending than a lot of these things which often seem to fail at the last hurdle. And it was great seeing Stella Gonet again. Wish they'd do a new series of House of Elliot!

Ohanabanana i completely agree. I mentioned earlier that at the end we know what Alistair was like his past his family etc but we have absolutely no sense of jo. Who she was? who were her family colleagues friends...what was her past? We've nothing to go on or why she sermed to be estranged from everyone she ever knew bar that one friend who popped up from time to time but they didn't appear particularly close or have much to say to each other. Her character was completely one dimensional.

Also agree that we never really found out what the mum knew or didn't know things hinted at but we're none the wiser at the end.

Tempted to read the book to see if this is explained better

I minor thing I thought was clever;

Jo asked Al about why take her back to his flat and take the risk of getting caught his reply "I thought I could away with it"

It was the same with covering up Accidentally killing Noah, pure arrogance of "I thought I could get away with it"

The fact he worked in politics had complained bypassed me but did help explain why he wanted to manage media and could do so and why he was a complete arrogant sleaze!

TombIhadaGraveChange

I think it’s implausible that antibiotics could kill a baby unless the baby had something like a penicillin allergy.
Allergies aside, according to the NHS website, the most common side effects from antibiotics are digestive, so along the lines of vomiting and diarrhoea.

The TV series changed that the medicine to a painkiller - I think an opiate based one? That’s a much more plausible as a cause of death in an accidental overdose scenario.

Although given the lack of post mortem it could have been something like cot death for all anyone knows.

Someone clarified that the two medicines were in the same type of bottle in the book because they weren't let through security with the original bottles. Ok but would you not keep those bottles as far away as humanly possible from each other?

Jo said last night something along the lines of being reliant on Alistair and then waking up one day and realising she used to be her own person. I think the fact we don't see any of her family/colleagues/friends implies Alistair controlled her as happens in so many controlling relationships.

The mum had seen it all before which is presumably why she stayed close to Alex and Chloe rather than have a relationship with her son, and also why she told Jo after the crash that she was part of her family.

I think the 2 faces was explained adequately enough and refers to how Jo used what Alistair had done and learnt to live a lie just like him to escape. Alistair confessing to her and being upset may be a result of realising he had lost control of it all including Jo.

Alex with the shovel, the bush fire etc etc were all just plot devices to try and throw us off working out what happened.

Someone clarified that the two medicines were in the same type of bottle in the book because they weren't let through security with the original bottles. Ok but would you not keep those bottles as far away as humanly possible from each other?

Yes 100% and this is what puts me off the book as it just seems an impossible ridiculous thing to happen, particularly if you were taking a strong liquid medication.

I've had two non-sleeping high needs babies so understand how the sleep deprivation affects you but there is no way that you would put a babies medication and a strong pain killer in identical bottles, in the same bag and take them at the same time and not think hang on what a stupid thing to do.

If she was taking a strong pain killer it would likely be prescribed and been allowed on to the plane anyway if properly labelled.

So the assumption I took at the end was that alistair buried Noah on the building site and the house was built over him but how did she work that out from that picture?

Previously he had a picture of her and Noah on his phone. He replaced it with the one of her in the showhome so bizarrely kind of also her and Noah

If I ever give my baby Calpol (I had to a few times last week as she was unwell with a temperature) I have to double check the amount to give each time, even though I know it, and check that it’s the infant Calpol, not the 6+ one I have just in case her brothers need it. So there is no way I would have trusted myself to give a baby the correct medicine from two identical bottles, even if I did taste it! I’d drive myself mad thinking I’d given the wrong one!

Jo had asked for a photo of Noah's resting place and Al took the photo a few moments later. Once he admitted he wasn't under the tree she worked out why he was insistent on taking a photo she, at the time, didn't want to pose for.

And the photo was oddly angled - pointing down at the floor.

The story was well told but the idea of decanting the medicine into identical bottles is ludicrous. Anyone would have made some kind of mark to distinguish the bottles. A prescription medication would have been allowed anyway.

It’s a very bad idea to put two different medicines in identical bottles, yes, but someone in Joanna’s position - exhausted (poorly sleeping baby), in pain (bad back on TV adaptation / ear infection in book), stressed about being told they can’t take the original medicine bottles through security at the last minute - probably isn’t in the best frame of mind to be thinking things through clearly.

Alistair though, he’s got less excuses for not thinking about mix ups.

Although you’d think at some point, especially once they’d started the “better taste it so we know we’ve got the right bottle” routine, one of them would have been asking if they could borrow a pen from someone so they could write “Noah’s medicine” / “Jo’s medicine” on the appropriate bottles.

But I guess then there’d have been no story!

I enjoyed the first three episodes but the ending left me flat.

The whole story hinged on the medicine, which as others have said, just doesn't ring true. I expected to find out the "real" reason for his death.

Also the whole cover up thing and the assumption that it must have been the medicine. I just don't think that two distraught parents would jump to that conclusion or automatically try and cover it up.

I'm still tempted to read the book though.

I felt it didn't ring true either. She seem to deduce that he had given Noah the medicine by an elderly ladies letter? Just ridiculous imo. I felt it was rather disappointing in the end.

In the book she goes to see the lady and gets the info from her

felt it didn't ring true either. She seem to deduce that he had given Noah the medicine by an elderly ladies letter?

That confused me at first, but I think it's because when they first found deceased Noah, they were trying to remember when they last heard him cry, and Alistair never mentioned him crying at the carhire - they came to the conclusion he could have been asleep since the plane. The lady in the letter contradicted that - Noah was awake and Alistair knew that, as the lady said he was so good with him at the carhire or something along those lines (and if the baby was simply asleep on the pram, you wouldn't really say that). From that, she deduced that he purposely lied about him being asleep at the carhire (remember she walked away as the baby was waking up). Then she got to wondering why... Everything fell into place.

In fact, the elderly lady specifically mention the baby crying at the carhire and the dad being so tender with him.

They needed to put the scene of the bottles being refused at the security check and having to buy smaller ones ( Boots would probably have sponsored the scene) and of her following up the old ladies letter by a meeting with her. It would have made the whole thing more believable.

LOL Boots would certainly not have sponsored any product placement remotely connected to harm to a baby!

I deduced what had happened from the lady’s card, so it wouldn’t have been difficult for Jo, who had gone over, in detail, the timings of when she thought Noah had been awake and crying. Coupled with the fact that Jo said she had tasted the medicines before she gave him his in the plane, so she had a doubt that she gave him the wrong one. It was Alistair who gaslighted her over that, said she must have been mistaken, and she accepted it because she didn’t know there had been another time that he was awake and COULD have had anything.

why did Alistair suddenly fess up to Jo when he is usually a quick thinking liar? Surely what he did was terrible but it wasn’t a cold blooded murder so did he really deserve to die for it?

It wasn't a cold blooded murder. But it was a cold blooded, 'lie about his own responsibility for the death, purposefully accuse Jo (he could have left it vague), pursue custody for his daughter at Jo's expense, lie to her about the burial instead of face up to his guilt like she did every day' kind of thing.

Jo wanted to die after Noah died. Then she wanted to confess. And she wanted her baby to be buried somewhere beautiful. He denied her all of those things and lied to her in the process, over and over again. Not a hanging offence, no, but more than enough to push a grieving mother over the edge, right?

-Why does Jo find contentment/closure in the house where her baby is buried underneath? Wouldn’t it cause distress to realise that your baby was under a building site?

Again, she just wanted to be near him. She asked for that again and again. We saw that in all three following episodes. She didn't want to be exonerated - she didn't even want Alastair vilified in death. She just wanted to be close to her baby.