No.250 : The Ripper (TV) (2020)

The Ripper (TV) 2020 at the IMDb

 I was born in 1971 and in many ways the Yorkshire Ripper was my first experience of an ongoing hunt for a serial killer. I do have a distinct memory of the murder of Jacqueline Hill being reported in November 1980 and of it being the talk of the schoolyard. Fortunately she was the last victim, with Peter Sutcliffe being arrested soon after, after being picked up for offences unrelated to his murders.

I have been interested in the case and enjoyed a three part pod cast on the Case File site  which I’d strongly recommend. It went into greater depth than the Netflix TV show we are discussing now, but they are clearly different approaches to the same horrific crimes.

This Netflix documentary series is in four parts of roughly an hour each. They are presented in chronological order with the first setting the scene, the middle two covering the murders and the investigation and the last dealing with Peter Sutcliffe’s capture and the fallout of the investigation which, by all accounts, was botched and contributed to at least some of the murders being allowed to happen.

The series uses mainly archive footage and is pretty familiar in its approach, with a voiceover explaining what is happening set against news reports and newspaper headlines of the time. What sets this series apart however, is the present day interviews with many of the key players, which  included the son of one of the early victims who relives the trauma of learning of his mother’s demise and her character assassination in the press who dubbed her as a prostitute.

Other talking heads include Bruce Jones of Coronation Street fame who discovered one of the bodies as well as police personnel and journalists who worked the case at the time. I didn’t learn too much from this series, but what was done well was the telling of the story with events laid out in chronological order with graphics showing where each of the women died, relative to each other.

They also delved into Sutcliffe’s other crimes, many of which were forgotten when his 13 murders were being discussed. Several women survived his assaults and it was haunting to hear their first hand accounts of their encounters with the maniac.

The clear message from the series was one of police incompetence. The Ripper was interviewed nine times, with one officer telling us that he told his bosses that he had found the suspect only to be rebuffed owing to Sutcliffe not fitting the profile that had been created. There was also a lot of content devoted to the misogyny of the police and the public’s attitude towards the victims who were painted as worthless due to some being prostitutes. This was a valid thread for the programme but they did spend a lot of time on it with lots of opinions being offered about contemporary attitudes. 

This was fine and laudable but it was at the expense of other aspects of the case being unexplored - Sutcliffe himself didn’t get much of a profile with his motivations being largely untouched. We know he’s a nutter but what took him to that place and what made him so adept at murder and at evading capture? The other villain of the piece, the hoaxer ‘Weirside Jack’, was also not discussed in depth which was a shame as this was a thread the show left hanging. The hoaxes, which were bought wholesale by the police, contributed greatly to at least three murders being allowed to happen and I’d liked to have seen this aspect being explored. I did read up on it and the miscreant concerned got 8 years after a cold case investigation captured him in 2000.

Overall this was a well made and compelling series that paid due respect to the victims involved and highlighted the issues that led this murderer the chance to run free for a decade. It’s hopeful that lessons have been learned as it was clear that the policemen involved in this investigation couldn’t find their arse with both hands. At the end it was blind luck that netted the Ripper with the police investigation being as much use as a cock flavoured lollypop.

This was a crime of its time that will never happen again due to advances in DNA detection, CCTV and computing. The police were clearly negligent but the crimes belonged to one man alone, and that shouldn’t be forgotten amongst all the finger pointing.

This was a good and worthwhile effort but it was too short with the ending seeming somewhat rushed. The material could easily have filled 12 one hour episodes and I hope a ‘director’s cut’ that explores all the hanging threads is in the works.

The Tag Line : Ripper Yarns   70%

No.241 : The Stranger (TV, 2020)

The Stranger (TV) at the IMDb

Based on the novel by Harlan Coben ‘The Stranger’ is an 8 part series made by Netflix. The New Jersey setting of the novel has been transplanted to the UK with the series filmed in and around the Manchester area and using a lot of familiar actors.

Solicitor Adam seems to have the perfect life - he has a nice house, two sons and is married to her off ‘Ballykissangel’. His life is turned upside-down however when the titular stranger shows up and tells him to have a dig about his wife’s bank account. He does so and finds evidence that her pregnancy, which ended with a miscarriage two years previously, was in fact faked. He confronts her about this and shortly thereafter she goes missing.

Meanwhile a teenage rave goes wrong when a doped up youth is found naked in the woods and a decapitated alpaca is dumped in the town centre. Elsewhere Jennifer Saunders, who runs a coffee shop, gets a couple of shots of her own - to the head - and the police are at a loss to tie all these events together. Adam’s full plate is in danger of tipping over as he tries to protect his client Stephen Rea from eviction at the hands of Adam’s estranged father, Anthony Head.

All the while The Stranger is demanding blackmail money from a variety of victims about whom she knows their most intimate secrets. Are her actions purely financial or does she have moral convictions at the heart of her schemes? As the series progress the disparate strands of the story start to come together, with the exposed secrets causing untold damaged to those involved and their families.

I wasn’t too sold on this show at first as it looked like one of those ‘event’ ITV dramas that usually end up being a lot of predictable guff designed only to advance the career of some non-entity that they foolishly signed a contract with. I was however drawn in by the complex story and the compelling drama that unfolded. There were perhaps too many plot strands with a few going nowhere and serving only to distract you from the main thrust of the story. I guess a bit of misdirection is par for the course in a mystery drama, and the pace was such that I never lost interest in the next development.

The story developed logically and the detection angle was good. Siobhan Finnernan stood out as the lead detective although her accent made me think she was a refugee from Coronation Street. Richard Armitage was also good as the father struggling to understand what was going on and Rea and Paul Kaye did well in supporting roles that ran deep.

I was less impressed with ‘The Stranger’ herself who didn’t have the menace or gravitas the role demanded. I see in the book it was a bloke and this failing may have been down to the casting director looking to mix things up by casting a young woman, when the role demanded something a bit more sinister.

I liked how the story threads weaved together and the fact that everyone’s secrets impacted on those about them. The ending wasn’t a great surprise given the clues seeded throughout, but it was still a satisfying conclusion to an excellent and compelling drama.

THE Tag Line : Secrets, Secrets Are No Fun…  76%

 

No.220 : The Deceived (TV) (2020)

The Deceived at the IMDb

A change of pace for us now as we delve into the box sets section of the ‘My5’ app - Channel 5’s online offering. I’m sure this show would have broadcast on their main platform but it passed me by. I don’t watch much Channel 5 to be honest, as I largely dismiss it as a lot of tabloid nonsense and soaps. This sweeping view wasn’t totally discouraged as the inescapable ads that peppered this app viewing were for programmes about being fat and WWF Divas. ‘The Deceived’ may however be their attempt to get away from such risible rubbish (there was also a trailer about a show about what happens to your rubbish) as this was a pretty decent, quality production.

The series has only four episodes of about 44 minutes each so you could easily see it off in one evening, as we did. It’s debatable whether there is enough material to fill two and a half hours of viewing, but lubricated with a bottle of wine it passed the night in a decent, if largely unmemorable manner.

The film opens with Cambridge student Ophelia eyeing up her bearded lecturer, Michael. Michael has a beard that a bird could nest in and looks like Mac out of ‘Always Sunny’, but the girls all agree he’s dreamy. The two meet up in the time honoured fashion of her dropping papers and him helping to pick them up, and soon they are having awkward looking sex in his office chair. Michael’s wife is a successful author and he’s living in her shadow, but he does have a new book of his own coming out.

He seems to put it about though, and Ophelia gets warned off when she and a friend witness Michael fighting with another woman. He then disappears and after some detective work Ophelia tracks him to his remote home village in Ireland. It turns out that Michael’s wife Roisin has died in a fire and he has returned home to sort out the house and her affairs. His day gets even better when Ophelia announces that she’s pregnant.

She moves into the creepy, half burnt out, family pile and soon starts to hear strange noises coming from a locked room. She also gets attention from a local handyman and an overbearing mother figure who suspects that Ophelia may not be the literary agent that she claims to be.

As the episodes go by a young man appears looking for his missing sister and Ophelia starts to see and hear strange goings on. Why is everyone feeding her tea and what really happened to Roisin on that fateful night?

I quite liked this workmanlike mystery thriller. As soon as it got underway you knew where it was going and the only cliff-hanger was which of the obvious outcomes would the writers chose for the big revelation. There was more than a little of ‘Rebecca’ about the whole enterprise with it clear to us that Ophelia wasn’t going nuts, and that there were strange happenings afoot.

I’m not the sharpest at such things but even I cottoned onto the twist by episode two and it was a long 90 minutes wait to see things pan out in the predicted fashion. To be fair it was well made with rural Ireland and Cambridge both looking great. The cast was largely good with there being no big names to distract you. Emmett J Scanlan in the lead had most of the heavy lifting to do, and he carried it off well moving from charmer to…something else, with relative ease. I was less sympathetic towards Emily Reid as Ophelia who was a bit needy and annoying.

Overall I think this could have been condensed into a 90 minute film as there was plenty of padding and subplots, like that with the builder, not going anywhere. There was nothing you haven’t seen before, but as a lockdown time passer you could do worse.

THE Tag Line : No Mystery Here! 61%