The Control Room viewers slam 'waste of time' ending

The Control Room's Sam and Gabe
Viewers really weren't impressed with the finale of The Control Room... (Image credit: BBC)

The Control Room has concluded on BBC1, but fans were left raging about a finale that they branded a "drama misfire" and "a waste of three hours".

Throughout the three-part series, we followed emergency call handler Gabe (Iain De Caestecker) who received a desperate call from a woman named Sam (Joanna Vanderham), explaining that she's killed someone. On top of this, the duo know each other.

During the series Gabe went through hell, ending up with gangsters on his tail after a botched exchange of illegal goods, a dead body in the back of a van, and all sorts of drama to stop Sam from going down for murder.

There was a twist in the tale too, as it was revealed that Gabe's colleague Anthony (Daniel Portman) is Sam's boyfriend and the two have been manipulating Gabe from the beginning, in order to do Anthony's illegal bidding, including selling sensitive information from the control room.

It was revealed that Sam was also a figure from Gabe's past, and he speaks to childhood acquaintances Robbo (Daniel Cahill) and Eilidh (Charlene Boyd) to discuss Sam, who they've kept in touch with, and finds out that she was responsible for the fire that accidentally killed Robbo's father during childhood, and not Gabe as everyone was led to believe.

To cut a long story short, Sam eventually has a change of heart and decides to stop Anthony from ruining Gabe's life and walking away, by calling the police. The series ends with Sam and Gabe reconciling but it's clear there's still bad blood between them.

Despite all the drama, however, viewers weren't impressed with The Control Room with many being critical of the storyline and an "unbelievable" plot. Many took to Twitter to air their frustrations about the latest BBC series.

This isn't the only things fans were frustrated about, as previously they criticised the stupid decisions made in episode one, so this one hasn't worked among many telly fans.

However, some viewers thought otherwise with one fan saying it was "beautifully written with lots of twists and turns", so it's had very different responses from people!

So far there's no news about whether or not The Control Room will be recommissioned, but if season 2 is on the cards we'll be sure to let you know.

The Control Room is available on-demand via BBC iPlayer.

Lucy Buglass
Senior Staff Writer

Lucy joined the WhatToWatch.com team in 2021, where she writes series guides for must-watch programmes, reviews and the latest TV news. Now she works for our sister site TechRadar in the same role. Originally from Northumberland, she graduated from Oxford Brookes University with a degree in Film Studies and moved to London to begin a career writing about entertainment.

She is a Rotten Tomatoes approved film critic and has a huge passion for cinema. She especially loves horror, thriller and anything crime-related. Her favourite TV programmes include Inside No 9, American Horror Story, Stranger Things and Black Mirror but she is also partial to a quiz show or a bit of Say Yes to the Dress