“Emmerdale is good, clean, murder fun!” Whodunnits are a soap favourite, where a character is bumped off by a mystery assassin, normally after several other characters have snarled, “I’ll kill ’em!” through gritted teeth. This is followed by several weeks of shifty behaviour and several red herrings, before the killer is finally unmasked, sometimes to gasps of astonishment, but quite often to groans of slight disappointment after all that time we’ve spent waiting for the truth. Plus, we rarely get to see the killer doing the deed, just an explanation after the fact.
That’s why I approve of Emmerdale this week – it’s less of a ‘whodunnit?’ and more of a ‘whoduzzit?’. We still get the big arguments and vows of revenge from each suspect, but on the last episode…
