Cat Jones on the divisive ending of The Jetty: “It isn’t just perfect, faultless women who deserve to be safe, it’s all women”

The Jetty

Credit: BBC

Entertainment


Cat Jones on the divisive ending of The Jetty: “It isn’t just perfect, faultless women who deserve to be safe, it’s all women”

By Meg Walters

7 months ago

9 min read

Stylist sits down with Cat Jones, creator of BBC’s The Jetty, to unpack the ending that has got everyone talking.


The Jetty has caused quite a stir since its release on the BBC last week. A smart, probing thriller, the show uses the tried and tested conceit of the detective drama to offer up a layered, often uncomfortable look at the thriving culture of misogyny in the UK. 

Jenna Coleman plays Detective Ember Manning, whose investigation into the 17-year-old cold case of a missing teen leads her down a challenging, increasingly personal path, and she soon finds herself confronting and questioning her own past. It’s a bold, complex, feminist piece – but equally, it’s a gripping, edge-of-your-seat thriller. As such, it came as no surprise when the show’s final episode delivered a truly shocking twist. (Please look away now if you haven’t already binged your way through all four episodes.)

Jenna Coleman in The Jetty

Credit: BBC

In the last episode, Ember finally discovers the truth about what happened to the missing girl, Amy Knightly – it turns out she was not, as so many had started to believe, killed by Malachy ‘Mack’ Granger, Ember’s late husband and Amy’s boyfriend at the time. Instead, she was accidentally hit by a car – and an intoxicated young Ember was behind the wheel. Ember also discovers that Arj, Mack’s friend, has spent the last 17 years convinced that he had been the one driving after Mack lied to him to protect Ember. Arj confesses that he killed Riz, a true crime podcaster, after she found evidence that implicated him. Arj sets himself on fire and Ember narrowly escapes. Ultimately, Ember decides to lie to the police about her involvement and pin both crimes on the now-deceased Arj.

It’s a bold ending that challenges our desire for a clean-cut moral binary. But as the show’s creator Cat Jones tells Stylist, that’s the whole point of the show. “I guess it is bold because it’s a story about male violence in which a woman is very implicated in the crime,” she says. “But for me, that doesn’t undermine the themes. It’s the perfect embodiment of them.”

Ultimately, Jones’s aim was to get people really talking about the complexities of misogyny and sexism embedded into our culture. “It seems to be sparking a lot of conversations, which is really great… it’s nice to be [part of] something that people are really talking about,” she says.

She’s right. People have a lot to say. In fact, some people seem to be furious with her ending. Others see it as a feminist triumph. Some are simply desperate to talk to someone about it.

So, naturally, we had to sit down with Jones to unpack it all.


Congratulations on the show, Cat. I’ve loved seeing how it pushes the limitations of genre to dig into the moral complexities and grey areas of modern womanhood.

It seems to be sparking a lot of conversations, which is really great. I think it’s very easy to watch something that’s just a thriller or a mystery that doesn’t do anything else. And they’re really entertaining, but you’re not going to talk about them at work the next day. So it’s nice to be [part of] something that people are really talking about.

I read in another interview that you drew on your own experiences while writing the show.

I had friends who had ‘boyfriends’ – in inverted commas! – who were adult men. I do remember feeling a bit uneasy about it. I could sort of see what the attraction was: these guys were older, they would have a car and they would be very mature – or at least they would seem very mature. I think those girls have really stuck with me. I wonder how they may think about those relationships now. I think: ‘Do they look back on that and see an abusive relationship or do they look back on that and see something that you know was OK in spite of the age difference?’ 

Coercive relationships are hard to recognise

Cat Jones

I’m also a queer woman, and there’s something about sitting on the outside and looking in at these relationships between these men and these girls and trying to deconstruct what’s happening there. Is it a genuine attraction? Is it about the girls’ self-esteem? Is it just an absolute abuse of power? Of course, you couldn’t say in every instance that it would be a very damaging relationship for that girl. But you also couldn’t say it’s a healthy thing either. And if there’s a chance that it would damage one girl, it can’t happen to any girl. So it’s really a complicated thing.

In the finale episode. it turns out that Ember was responsible for Amy’s death 17 years ago. Could you talk me through why you decided to end the show with such a bold – and potentially controversial – twist?

I suppose I was trying to do something that functions on a couple of different levels. The right ending to any piece of fiction is always the one that is right for the characters and the story you’re trying to tell – rather than something that just delivers a thrill. 

The Jetty

Credit: BBC

In the case of The Jetty, the show is, on one level, an investigation into a missing girl. But on another level, it’s about Ember’s investigation into her own past – it’s about her trying to answer the question: ‘Was my relationship unhealthy or toxic or coercive?’ Had we made Malachy the killer, that ending would have provided a very simplistic answer to the question. It would have made him a monster and we’d be able to confirm that, yes, their relationship probably was toxic. Perhaps some people would have found that a satisfying ending. But I wouldn’t have, because it wouldn’t have felt as real as I hope the rest of the show does. The reality is that coercive relationships are hard to recognise, and often the coercive person isn’t an out-and-out monster. Mack didn’t murder Amy, but he was having an illegal relationship with her, along with an inappropriate relationship with Ember. That night he gave them both drugs and he encouraged Ember to drive, and he did all of that in the context of being the more powerful person. So ultimately he is, in my mind, the most responsible for Amy’s death.

And what about Ember’s decision to lie to the police about her role in Amy’s death?

All along we haven’t wanted the show to be simplistic. We’ve wanted Ember to be flawed – and for Amy to be flawed, too. Because ultimately, it isn’t just perfect, faultless women, if they even exist, who deserve to be safe; all women deserve to be safe. To me, this felt like the right ending to the story. I guess it is bold because it’s a story about male violence in which a woman is very implicated in the crime. But that doesn’t undermine the themes. It’s the perfect embodiment of them.

There’s also another strand of this whole thing, which is about memory and perception. For Ember to be chasing something and to find herself at the end of it, she has to confront her own actions that night. That feels like a really satisfying ending, but I’m sure it will generate a bit of debate. I hope it does. Because if people are talking about whether it’s the right ending or not, I guess they are talking about the ideas and themes in the show. And that’s really what we want them to be doing.

The Jetty

Credit: BBC

I also wanted to ask you about Amy and Kitty’s ending. Their final scene is so heartbreaking and is filled with so many almost contradictory layers.

You know, I think quite a lot of queer women will have had the experience while growing up of being in love with a straight friend and feeling that perhaps that person weaponised that love against them and manipulated them. That’s certainly an experience I have had. But I wanted it to be more than that. I didn’t want it to be quite as clear-cut as that. Amy does go into her relationship with Caitlin thinking this is going to be a useful person – someone I can control. But what happens, I think, is that Amy does have feelings for Caitlin. They have very genuine feelings for each other. In a different universe, had Amy met Caitlin before she met Malachy, I think it would have been a really different outcome. There is a genuine love between them. I would like to think Caitlin would have given Amy another way of validating herself that wasn’t just about her sexual power over people. So it’s kind of a tragic story, really. And I love those two actors together. There’s just such chemistry between them. 

We wanted Ember to be flawed

Cat Jones

I was also fascinated by the male characters in the show. Arj, who killed Riz, ends up being the monster we expected Malachy to be. What was your thought process when it came to his dramatic final scene?

He does terrible things. But I guess it would be pretty poor drama if we didn’t try to humanise all the characters – that’s not to say we forgive them or let them off the hook, particularly not him. But for me the whole point of a piece of drama is to put yourself in other people’s shoes – even the people who are doing the most terrible and unforgivable things. Because that is how we reflect upon our own behaviour.

Then there’s Hitch, Ember’s younger partner, who repeatedly falls into the role of bystander, keeping quiet while other men in the town say horribly misogynistic things. It’s a situation a lot of women will recognise. Why was it important for you to explore that?

It’s hard, I think, to challenge people. It’s easier to let things go. If you’re asking a young guy like Hitch to challenge more dominant men in a pub like that, you’re asking quite a lot of him. It’s really brave to stand up and be counted in that moment. But I think that a lot of guys might not even understand why there’s such a need to do it. Because if you’re a guy who wouldn’t dream of being violent towards a woman and you’re sitting among a group of guys and somebody makes a joke, for you that’s just a horrible joke. You might laugh politely at it, but you wouldn’t connect that to actually being violent towards a woman. But if there’s one guy in that group for whom that joke is normalising the idea of being violent or abusive to women, then it can’t happen. Someone like Hitch has to see the need to challenge that culture before he finds the bravery to do it. It is a lot but it is what we’re going to need guys to do if there’s going to be a change in the culture.

Jenna Coleman The Jetty

Credit: BBC

Can you tell us anything about a potential second season?

I mean, for me, Ember’s journey is not complete. I would love to take her further if the circumstances allowed for that and everything fell into the right place!


The Jetty is now streaming on BBC iPlayer.

Images: BBC

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