10 TV Finales That Messed With Your Brain
5. Camping - ‘Episode 6’
If Camping had simply remained the kind of repellent, fascinating, deeply unpleasant pitch-black comedy that creator, writer and director Julia Davis had made her name with, it would have been bad enough.
The series centres on a camping trip organised around timid doormat Robin’s fiftieth birthday by his overbearing, spiteful wife Fiona. When the rest of the guests arrive - boorish alcoholic Adam, his chirpy partner Kerry and his constantly masturbating teenage son, plus d*ckhead Tom and his party monster girlfriend Fay (played by Davis herself) - the scene is set for the worst weekend away in all recorded history.
The mediocre US adaptation of Camping leaves it there, but Davis - the black widow of British comedy - had more in store for us. Campsite owner Noel (a twitchy, muttering Mark Heap) has a few dark secrets tucked away behind the net curtains of the nearby house, including a mother with an unspecified illness that requires him to hose down several pairs of her enormous, stained underwear every morning.
The final episode veers sharply into horror, with the cast spectacularly trashed on Fay’s cheap ketamine and booze and having horrible sex with one another in various combinations, while Noel - whose mother appears to have literally sh*t herself to death - runs around the dark campsite, naked and aroused.
In escaping from him, Fiona backs her car into Tom, who’s left to the cavorting Noel’s terrifying ministrations. In the morning, everyone leaves with the exception of Tom (who’s nowhere to be seen) and Fay, who wakes on Noel’s sofa to notice dried blood around his fingernails...