Heartbeat Flatlines....

Ha, Ha, Ha.

With the news that ITV is to halve its episodes of The Bill and that it will be axing much loved Sunday night staple Heartbeat, this humble blogger has got to thinking; how should Heartbeat end? The boring and obvious conclusion is that the clock strikes midnight, heralding the 1st of November 1970, but wouldn't it be great if they just throw caution to the wind and went absolutely fucking nuts in their last season? So here are 4 ways (In no particular order) to end Heartbeat.

1. Aidensfield is trapped in a time bubble
Well how else do you explain how it's been the 60's for the past 17 years? Think of it, a dishevelled character stumbles into the Aidensfield Arms and collapses. His pockets are searched and they find a number of weird unrecognisable items (iPhone, iPod, etc.) where has this man come from and how did he end up in this state? Cue nice gentle Sunday mystery until they realise there's no record of this strange man anywhere, he recovers and takes local bobby (Whoever's playing him nowadays.) to the edge of Aidensfield where they find a strange shimmering light (Dougie Henshall would call that an "anomaly") which they step through to find...da-da-daaaa; modern day Earth! They could find a giant sprawling garden centre or a Tesco or something. Maybe the anomaly then closes up and we lose 60's Aidenfield until it returns hundreds of years later like Brigadoon.

2. It's all an alien plot!
There's a cracking Tom Baker Doctor Who where an alien race has recreated a 1970's village to train a bunch of androids how to act so they can infiltrate and invade 1970's Earth! Switch the 70's for the 60's and BAM, we end Heartbeat with our androids finishing their training and setting off, destination: Earth!

3. He's in a coma
Nick Berry (Because I don't know the new actors names) is hearing voices in his head, and the TV's started talking to him. Is he mad? Throughout the course of the episode he's trying to solve some case or other, ending in a car chase (or a train robbery like the real Life on Mars) and the car crashes, erupts in flames! Oh my goodness! The image then goes out of focus, cutting to Nick Berry in a modern hospital bed, and it transpires he had a terrible accident and has been in a coma all this time, imagining he's in a gentle Sunday night ITV drama! Genius! America promptly remake it with Harvey Keitel as Derek Fowlds character.

4. Everybody Dies!
Blakes 7 famously ended by killing off every single character! Well, not quite, we don't ever really find out if Avon lives but they're all pretty much gunned down by the brutal Federation.
Now of course there was no facistic governing body running things in the 60's and noone in Aidensfield is rebelling against them, so maybe an unhinged war veteran (They're always war veterans) walks into the Aidensfield Arms and starts picking everyone off one by one until he gets to Nick Berry who also has a gun, it cuts to the outside of the pub, hearing a gunshot so we never know if Nick survived. They could also break the stringent rules on the soundtrack by putting in Nick Cave's fantastic, 14 minute ballad about a pub massacre; O'Malleys Bar over the last 14 minutes of the episode.

Of course, they could always end the show by fading to black. So Heartbeat is cut down in its prime, another victim of the credit crunch. With Last of the Summer Wine going too, what does this mean for our other Sunday night staples? Are The Royal and Wild at Heart also at risk? These are truly difficult times...