The problem with Apple Tree Yard was simple but all encompassing: you couldn’t believe any of it.
Not because, like even the classiest ‘psychological thrillers’, it was implausible nonsense (but also great television).
No its fatal flaw was it transpired that not one but both of the protagonists were not just pathological, polished, liars but inveterate fantasists.
In the clear: The dramatic events of Monday night's Apple Tree Yard finale saw Dr Yvonne cleared of murder
The fact that Apple Tree Yard was told from the viewpoint of one of them (Dr Yvonne Carmichael) and narrated through her (terribly written) secret diary meant we couldn’t trust anything.
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Share 103 sharesHer hopelessly naïve inability to see through the deceit and delusion of her lover Mark Costley’s conduct only compounded things.
So when the verdicts came in there were only from the jury, not necessarily the viewers.
All's well: There were some parts of the way the drama was dealt with that made Yvonne easier to trust
A relief: Mark Costley was found Guilty of manslaughter, not murder
Mark Costley was found Guilty of manslaughter, not murder, having viciously killed George Selway the man who had brutally raped Carmichael. How many viewers felt that Carmichael was innocent of the same charges – or in general – we’ll never know.
They could have been forgiven for feeling less certain they knew what had really happened, and why.
The true nature of the protagonists’ personalities and their motives, particularly of the heroine, were still shrouded in secrecy and ambiguity.
What Dr. Yvonne Carmichael was doing (or what she thought she was doing) was just as debatable/dubious in the finale’s final scenes as it had been in the very beginning of the first episode – when she had sex with the then-stranger.
Too many questions: The true nature of the protagonists’ personalities and their motives, particularly of the heroine, were still shrouded in secrecy and ambiguity
Even the significance of her parting glance to camera was Mona Lisa-elusive.
If anything, the question of why she was so irresistibly, self-destructively, drawn to Mark Costley was more questionable now – after what she’d learnt during the trial about who he was (or wasn’t).
This was pretty shocking – more for her than for us.
As I suggested after Episode Two, the manner in which Costley killed George Selway (having knocked on his front door in broad daylight while Yvonne waited in the getaway car outside) was a huge clue that her mysterious lover was not a spy, as she’d assumed and been led by him to believe.
He had been rejected by MI5 and was just a security officer at Westminster whose duties included (don’t laugh) Health & Safety. Where’s the glamour?
Burning questions: The big question at the end of it was who was the maddest: Costley or Carmichael?
Costley also had a reputation and a record for being violent and a sex pest, although not remotely as bad as his victim, whom Costley had kicked to death, shattering Selway’s voicebox by stamping and jumping on his face and throat. Nice.
Despite this and the fact that Dr Carmichael’s dangerous liaison with Costley had only come out after he had revealed it to his lawyer – who used it against her, seriously undermining her case and jeopardizing her freedom – the finale ended with Carmichael visiting him in prison.
Placing her hand over his (over the glass between them) she still seemed to believe their relationship was more about love than sex, that ‘the feelings were real’ - as she had before when she reiterated ‘I saw you and you saw me.’
It was a shame that she didn’t see he was not a spy then, that she wasn’t ‘f**king a spook’, that he was a fantasist, a married man with two kids, a failure, a liar, a vengeful, vicious, narcissist, a womanizer, more interested in satisfying his own predilection for sex in public than her romantic hopes.
The big question at the end of it was who was the maddest: Costley or Carmichael? Or us for watching?
She believes it: Placing her hand over his (over the glass between them) she still seemed to believe their relationship was more about love than sex
Here are 7 questions thrown up by the finale.
1. Was the court case remotely plausible?
The notion that the affair between the two lovers accused of murder would not have been discovered by the detectives who’d arrested and investigated them, by the lawyers prosecuting or defending them, or by any of their families, friends, and work colleagues, was ludicrous. Particularly as their sex life was conducted almost entirely in public (in the pub toilets and alleyways of Central London or crypts in the Palace of Westminster). As you do… Or don’t.
Even the other characters didn’t believe Yvonne’s story.
‘Why DID your co-defendant kill George Selway?’ asked one legal advisor.
‘He was warning off him as a favour to me,’ Yvonne claimed blankly.
‘Quite a favour ! You hadn’t known him that long had you?’ he remarked.
Yes you could that.
2. Why did such a strong, successful, intelligent, woman suddenly embark on this improbable descent of reckless sex, family betrayal, and delusion?
Apart from some sudden, inexplicable, urge to self-destruct this wasn’t clear.
‘Why did you do it? Why with someone like that?’ asked her best friend, mystified, after it came out.
‘He didn’t seem the way he seems in court,’ Yvonne mumbled. Not much of an answer.
‘Please at least tell me that the sex was good.’
She didn’t answer that either. Even Carmichael seemed to know it was all rather forlorn and sordid – like the moment she sat on the loo taking her underwear at Mark’s behest. All she wanted was to go to a hotel.
3. Was Yvonne the worst diary writer of all time?
‘Just for that moment I doubted you. Forgive me my love… You are my knight in shining armour. You’ve admitted you acted alone. Keeping me safe.’
‘If relationships are stories there is no happy ending for ours. But life as they say goes on.’
‘Dear X. With good behaviour and help from your psychiatrist you’ll be free in five years.’
Frankly, her diary was so absurd it was hard to tell if she was serious.
4. Why couldn’t Carmichael ever accept she had done anything wrong, acted badly or out of character?
When she was arrested for breaching the conditions of her bail, her immediate response was ‘I haven’t done anything.’ When her own lawyer pointed out she had texted Costley back twice, she merely complained ‘he’s not even supposed to have a phone in prison is he?’
Then when Costley’s QC destroyed her, branding her as a liar after Costley had revealed their affair, her voice-over merely commented: ‘courts aren’t about the truth. They’re about who tells the best story’ – as if their affair was irrelevant or she hadn’t driven him to Selway’s house and then away from the murder scene and kept it quiet.
She ended up just convicted of perjury but spared prison. Even this only inspired self-pity rather than relief.
‘A suspended sentence ! Sounds about right. Suspended. Hanging above me - the sword that could fall on my neck at any time. And of course my good behaviour has to last a lifetime.’
This was a reference to the penance she had to pay with her husband Gary for her affair and enduring the trial. But even his support was not enough. She wanted him to tell their daughter about his own fleeting dalliance with his assistant.
‘Surely it’s only fair that she knows about you and Rosa?’
Hardly the same.
5. Why was Yvonne not affected by finding out what Costley had done?
Yvonne was virtually indifferent to the violence he inflicted on Selway – as with most things so inured she was blank.
‘How did it go so far? Did he provoke you? I know you. You’re not a monster,’ she mused. Well he did stamp a man to death...
For a supposed feminist heroine, she cared little about the way she or her lover affected other women? His wife, her own pregnant daughter, the colleague at Westminster that he lasciviously groped in public...
Her wet lament ‘poor sergeant Johns’ was hardly an adequate response.
6. Why was she visiting Costley in prison?
Even after the affair, the murder, and the trial – even after her daughter’s baby, and her husband’s forgiveness, Yvonne was still lying: to her husband, her family, herself…
By now she knew that ‘two weeks after I told you that George Selway raped me you were in that pub with Sergeant Johns.’
She knew now she was not ‘f**king a spook’ but a man whose job was to ‘check the duty logs’ and ‘supervise the shifts for CCTV monitoring crews.’
But when Costley called it ‘the flat’, she still corrected him: ‘the safe house.’
Costley had told his lawyer about their affair after he had seen her look up at her husband in the public gallery to let her know her their daughter had given birth to their grandson.
He argued feebly that his QC ‘twisted everything’ and that he had only told her ‘because how else would anyone know? How would they know that it had been real?’
She forgave him, still soppy and love-sick, drifting back into her fantasy.
‘You panicked. Is that what happened with George Selway. I know you wouldn’t have meant to kill him.’
Like he crushed his voicebox by accident...
7. Did Carmichael encourage Costley to exact violent revenge for the rape on her behalf, as he claimed?
The final episode did not remind us that she had asked Costley: ‘can’t you warn him off for me?’ and he had eagerly replied: ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t like to put the wind up that pathetic piece of s**t.’
‘I would. I want him to crap himself with fear. I want to feel half as terrified as he made me feel.’
So when she picked him up at the station and they set off heading for Selway’s house (with Costley’s only plan to escape detection seemingly being to wear a hoodie) what did she think was going to happen or they were doing? It seemed pretty clear.
Sure enough at the end of the finale, when she visited him in prison, Costley whispered ‘I never told them what you said.’
A flashback showed them in bed together and he asked: ‘what do you want?’
‘I want you to kill him !’ Yvonne giggled. ‘I want you to smash his f**king face in !’
Through the prison glass she looked at him in wide-eyed denial and just murmured: ‘people can say anything.’
Not exactly a the type of rebuttal you’d give to an accusation of inciting murder.
‘You really can’t tell the difference can you?’ she added.
It was true of course, but was she much better?
Emotional: The ending was every bit as nail-biting
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