Brassic alternate ending revealed by star as closing scenes sparked big debate

**Warning: Major Brassic finale spoilers ahead.**

Sky TV’s hugely popular comedy series Brassic has ended with a literal bang, but actor Ryan Sampson, who plays Tommo, has revealed the final scene could have been very different.

Episode 6 of Brassic’s final season has Vinnie (Joe Gilgun), Tommo and the gang meeting rival criminals Davey MacDonagh (Neil Ashton) and Joey Kittens (Dylan Baldwin) for lunch at a remote countryside pub in the snow. Before they arrived, Davey removed the staff and placed his own cousins behind the bar. He also shot Joey, and once everyone is settled in for the meal, he holds them all hostage.

Trying to save his friends, Vinnie goes with an unhinged (and armed) Davey into the woods, and after the rest of the gang overpower Davey’s cousins, they head off to find him.

Unfortunately, Joey’s niece Fay, who also has a rifle, finds her uncle’s body in the snow and blames Vinnie, aiming the gun at him and then at Davey. Vinnie pulls out the vintage gun he found in the pub, and a stand-off follows when Davey refuses to put his gun down.

The search party then hear a gunshot echo through the trees, and viewers see Vinnie lying in the snow, with blood by his side. As the camera draws close, we see flashbacks to Vinnie’s life with his friends, and his love for Erin (Michelle Keegan) and their son Tyler, before he sits up and the end credits roll.

“There was a lot of debate over what the exact last second should be,” Sampson confessed in an exclusive interview with RadioTimes.com.

“Should he sit up? Should he have the flashbacks? Should someone else? Was it someone else who was going to get shot at one point? It went round in the drafts we had," he explained. "There were so many, and I think they wanted to leave it open, just in case they want to do more Brassic later. So that's why Vinnie opens his eyes and stuff and sits up.”

Read more:

• Brassic future teased by star Ryan Sampson as series comes to a close
• Farewell to Brassic – one of the funniest and rudest shows on TV

“I think at one point he was meant to get shot in the head, and then he didn't and I seem to remember Joe [Gilgun] being like, ‘I don't want to be dying in last scene,’” Sampson added. “So obviously, he's got an idea about maybe we don't want it to end, but to be honest, there's no concrete plan yet. It just feels like it's definitely ended. But now there's a door being left open, you know?”

Sampson also noted that Danny Brocklehurst, who co-created the show with Joe Gilgun, may have his own plans for Brassic in the future, which meant that Vinnie had to survive the shooting. “I think there's a sneaky idea that Danny’s mentioned that he'd kind of like to write a film of it at some point. So who knows if that will happen? I don't know, but it's obviously in the back of his head.”

The final episode, entitled The Carvery (the remote pub is chosen as a meeting place because it has a good carvery) is already pretty cinematic. It pays homage to Quentin Tarantino’s 2015 movie The Hateful Eight, which starred Samuel L Jackson, Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh as a group of strangers who seek refuge in a stagecoach inn during a blizzard a few years after the American Civil War.

“Episode 6, I think is one of the most cinematic episodes we've done,” Sampson said. “The CGI budget, apparently, is just through the roof with the snow. So I'm really proud of that. I think it looks really amazing.

"But also there's all these little Easter eggs in it. The whole episode is meant to be like The Hateful Eight. So Darren [Finch], the costume designer, has snuck in all these little references in the costumes. Kurt Russell wears this huge bear skin coat in the movie, and so I'm wearing this big, like fur number, just to like echo it. I thought it was really clever.”

The wintry effects in the episode had to be added using computer imagery as there was no snow when the cast and crew were filming.

“The really mad thing is, at the beginning of the series, we had loads of snow and we were fighting to film stuff that didn't have any snow in it,” Sampson said.

“For the bit where the second half of the bus is going over the cliff [in the first episode], there was snow all around. So they had to melt all the snow, and then we had to come back when it wasn't there to film. And then when they were doing the snow scenes in the final episode, they had to just put all this snow in. So this is the nonsense of making TV.”

Sampson's next project post-Brassic is the third season of the comedy series Mr Bigstuff, which he is currently writing and stars in with Danny Dyer. While both series are known for being rude and adventurous on screen, he said there are big differences behind the scenes between Brassic and Mr Bigstuff.

“Every set has got its own different flavour,” he explained. “It's like every workplace you go into, it's got its own sort of set of rules and so on. On Brassic, it's very much led by Joe [Gilgun] so it's raucous and sweary and a bit chaotic sort of thing. Mr Big Stuff is mainly led by Danny, who is like, ‘We're a fucking team’. And it's a big loving sort of thing.”

While Sampson doesn’t always enjoy writing the show — “I'm meant to be writing it right now, but I'm enjoying not doing it and talking to you instead, coming up with the outline and getting it all right is just a bloody nightmare” — he loves the series and hopes for more Mr Bigstuff in the future. “In my head, there's an overall story where we're going to in Mr Bigstuff. I would say it is a five-series arc, but we'll see if we get there.”

Brassic seasons 1-7 are available to stream now on Sky. Find out more about how to sign up for Sky TV.

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