“Families have stories, that’s what keeps them together,” says Samuel Cotton (Bernard Hill should be given British national treasure status) midway through tonight’s final trip to Manchester, this time on the dawn of a new millennium. Peter Bowker’s flawed but overall tender family rigmarole concluded with a fitting final chapter. From There to Here has always been about family right from the beginning and here it reached a peak with the Cottons, secrets spilling out of every aperture. From There to Here crept on a few more years again, sliding into the 21st century with everyone having moved on from the big reveal. New Order belted out Bizarre Love Triangle over an agile New Year celebration sequence, sure evidence that director James Strong has been one of the best aspects of this miniseries. In 2000, Claire has gotten over Daniel, Charlie, his son, is heading up the family business, Louise, now a fully fledged Blair Babe, is having an jeopardising affair and Daniel is living with his dad. At times three episodes felt like too little time to flesh out the dramatic events in From There To Here but as Daniel walked away from Joanne in the closing moments it felt, to me, like the miniseries had ended at the right moment. The bombshell reveal that Samuel is actually Daniel’s real father, not his adopted one, didn’t do much for me. While it was arguably a better twist then have another of the Cottons keel over at an inopportune moment it just felt like flabby drama stapled onto the end. Daniel’s plight, how his two worlds crumbled around him, reducing him to a moody curmudgeon (even unwilling to leave his room in his dad’s house, like a sullen teenager) was tangible and already enough of a hard-hitting spectacle. Episodes one and two carried little emotional potency but the events of this finale were deeply felt. You could argue that this means From There to Here should have been extended and stretched over six parts but Bowker tied everything up so very well and the sledgehammer performances from Glenister, Hill, Reeves, White et al. were powerful, just making up for the series’ faults. Daniel’s chat with Claire outside her home at the end could have gone two ways – a schmaltzy reconciliation, ending the series on a cloying note or it could have stuck to the realistic approach From There to Here has established in previous episodes. Thankfully it chose the latter because while it would have been nice to have seen Daniel scoop up Claire in his arms and bound back inside the house it would have been jarring. Still, Bowker did allow himself an ounce of sentimentality in the final scene that left the state of Joanne and Daniel’s relationship ambiguous. From There to Here ended with an obsolete voiceover epilogue as Daniel told us how the key characters got on in life. It was all very merry (Louise losing her seat as an MP was quickly tempered with a happy image of her at her wedding) if a little blithe. But it confirmed what From There to Here has been all about – family and love. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
