The ending, by which time four police officers are dead and a number of careers are in ruins, had echoes of series one, and proved controversial: it was downbeat and difficult, and Mercurio has repeatedly found himself forced to defend it.
It's a downbeat signing-off for America's No 1 dad, Dr Cliff Huxtable, part of the troika of highest paid black entertainers in America: Oprah, Michael Jackson, and Bill.
UKTV Gold's website says "it was a suitably downbeat end to an equally downbeat man".
It would all be downbeat but for interviews with young political movers and activists and memorably a young woman in a polling booth with the big, awed smile of a first time voter that says, yes, I do have a stake.
It's a downbeat film, not bad, but not too good, either.
"What I have noticed is that the audience is much more interested in an unexpected twist, even if it's a downbeat twist".
But otherwise it's one downbeat, unmemorable, plain-spoken tune after another.
Awake won't be an easy sell, because it's somewhat downbeat and more than a little foggy: Isaacs' character has either lost his wife or his son or, to get even more metaphysical, perhaps both.
It is fashionable to be downbeat about social media: to dismiss it as being riddled with the banal and the narcissistic, or for stripping human interaction of warmth as conversations shift away from the "real world" to the online sphere.
