Love/Hate ending provokes love and hate as last episode gains 1,007,500 viewers

There is only one thing worse than being talked about and that's not being talked about. It is as true for a television drama as it is when Oscar Wilde first coined the phrase.

Sunday night's finale of season four of Love/Hate provoked both love and hate in equal measure, along with a degree of confusion.

“Well that was an anti-climax season finale for me,” tweeted one viewer.

"Love/Hate finale was basically Tommy getting a nose bleed. Unbelievable cast there, please use them better next series. Ta," and "too bad the climax was worth less than Fran's out of date shrooms" were just some of the many comments left on Twitter about Sunday night's final episode.

Viewers were puzzled by a number of loose ends. Why did Paddy the pipebomber leave in such a hurry on the ferry, why was Wayne gunned down when he could have been useful for Nidge in a new series and when did Fran get that missing tooth replaced?

Improbable
A lot of fans thought the ending where Tommy started to bleed from every orifice, a legacy of last year's beating by Nidge, was an improbable plot device that wraps up a complicated ending.

Tommy’s seizure stopped the drugs arriving. Without the goods, the gardaí had no hard evidence and Nidge got away with it, but not before a bizarre episode where he seemed to go crazy in his cell. Whatever the merits of the final episode, it is certain that it was the most watched to date in all the four series.

An average of 1,007,500 viewers watched the episode for a 54 per cent market share and that was up against the final episode of Downton Abbey. At one stage 1,276,800 viewers were watching Love/Hate.

Creator and writer Stuart Carolan was not available for comment yesterday. He is already working on a fifth series, but producer Suzanne McAuley said they were "absolutely thrilled" with the ratings and that the show was a success as a result of word of mouth.