Netflix show You finale pulled out all the stops but did it work?

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Ah, how time flies when you are slaying women. Can it only be four series ago that Guinevere Beck, “Beck” to those closest, walked into Mooney’s bookstore in New York to thank the man who had saved her life, only to later kill her?

Now here we are, the fifth and final run for everyone’s favourite serial killer, Joe Goldberg. We ought not to like him, but the thing about Joe (played by Penn Badgley) is that he means well, at least at the start, but so many people get in the way of his doing good, and then he has to act, usually by locking them in a glass cage in the basement. 

When we meet Joe again he has left London and been back in New York for three years. Everything is going great. He’s married to fabulously rich Kate (Charlotte Ritchie, Ghosts), who knows about his past, and they’re bringing up his son Henry. Joe is such a devoted hubby and dad the tabloids call him “Prince Charming”. Joel has changed. 

But then a magazine finds out about a skeleton from Kate’s past, and if the story comes out she will be disgraced. Kate’s awful family are suspected of leaking the info. Is there anything Joe can do to help? And with that we’re off to the bloody, very bloody, races again.

Joe’s internal monologue can always find a way to rationalise the terrible things he has done. “It’s not about the murder,” he tells himself. “You need a feeling of purpose. Now you have one again.”

It helps, too, that he can be so deliciously sneery about his enemies. He is awful, truly awful, but funny with it so we like him.

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There’s a fair bit of plot recycling going on in the final series, which might try some viewers’ patience. But there are some cute new spins on familiar ideas too, as when Joe’s assistant Bronte (Madeline Brewer) is told not to open the door to the basement. Minutes later she’s picking the lock with the help of YouTube videos. They didn’t have those in series one. 

Things go from bad to ridiculous when Kate’s morally ugly half sisters Raegan and Maddie become involved. Such is the way with You. Sometimes it’s so outrageously daft you almost forget the horrors at the tale’s heart. Then a burst of sickening violence comes along to remind you what a monster Joe is. “A control-hungry goblin under a nice guy smile,” as someone describes him, which seems about right.

Extreme silliness and bloody murder make strange bedfellows to the end, more details of which I won’t divulge  for fear of spoiling the ten-episode binge-watch many fans will have planned. Let’s just say the turn of events will be controversial and leave it at that.

Badgley plays a blinder (could anyone else have been so charmingly tongue-in-cheek?), but the finale belongs to the women. It’s how Joe would have wanted it, don’t you think?