Code of a Killer

Catching criminals by DNA profiling seems so embedded in modern policing that it's astonishing to think it has only been a procedure at all since 1986, when DCS Baker (David Threlfall, having survived the flood as Noah) approached Alec Jeffreys (John Simm) at Leicester University to see if his pioneering work in genetic fingerprinting could help him catch the rapist and killer of two local women.

It's perhaps surprising that this case has taken so long to appear as a dramatisation, given it has the worthy 'breakthrough' element ('Breaking the Mould', 'Longitude') as well as a real-life serial killer (e.g. 'Appropriate Adult', 'See No Evil', 'This is Personal') and tried and trusted formulas are beloved of TV commissioners.  Watching this, though, we couldn't help but wonder whether it wouldn't have been better as a straightforward documentary account.  It has all the hallmarks of a police procedural, and we know the outcome, so it's a bit like watching a repeat of an episode of 'Lewis'.

There's mild interest when a young suspect comes forward to confess to one of the killings, but not the other, and is found innocent of both by way of his DNA comparison to that found on the victims.  That aside, though, this wasn't a case that grabbed the headlines for reasons of macabre methods, unlikely perpetrator or sheer numbers, and while the lab stuff is explained clearly enough for the lay audience, it isn't thrilling enough to sustain what will end up being over two hours of television.  Nor, at the other end of the scale, did it delve into the human drama of the victims' families ('Five Daughters').  Why cast the wonderful Dorothy Atkinson as Dawn Ashworth's mother?  So far she has had little to do but look distressed in a couple of scenes.

Finally, we are sorry to say that it wasn't imaginatively written and produced.  The 1983 setting is indicated by drab clothes, 70s wallpaper and a car stereo blaring 'Karma Chameleon'; the discovery of a body is shot in slow motion; Jeffreys' obsessive geekdom is indicated by his ignorance of The Smiths and his forgetting both a family wedding and his daughter's school play.  Since taking licence with the facts would be in poor taste here, we can only conclude that it wasn't a great choice for dramatisation after all.  The science, which is remarkable, has changed the course of many lives and will continue to do so, and Professor Jeffreys has received a deserved knighthood for his discoveries.  Some great stories tell themselves without the need for script and actors.

The Great Train Robbery

There must be some correlation between a society's sophistication and its obsession with deviance and were we to look, probably a few hundred PhD theses filed away on the subject.  In the wake of the recent 'Mrs. Biggs' comes 'The Great Train Robbery' about the antics of Buster, Biggs and the rest of the criminal gang in 1963.  (Not to be confused with the 19th Century attempt on a train that was turned into a novel and then a rather camp film by Michael Crichton in the 1970s, nor the 1903 Western.)  Not that it isn't an interesting tale, but the endless fascination induces the same queasiness as those other much-dramatised mid-20th Century cases, the Kray twins and Lord Lucan.  Somehow the violence becomes a by-product.

Does this new production avoid that trap?  Not entirely.  For every shot of sweaty men in dingy rooms in vests, there's a scene of the all-male gang in balaclavas and bowler hats; while they may have spent much time in greasy spoons, what's depicted is a nightclub scene with the gang as erstwhile Goodfellas, and while we're on comparisons, the stylised title sequence bears an uncanny resemblance to that of the late, lamented 'The Hour,

The based-on-truth story is almost undeserving of the script and cast, with Luke Evans as gang leader Reynolds and Neil Maskell as Buster Edwards fleshing out the moral ambiguity and Jack Roth unnerving as Charlie Wilson.

"Mickey Mouse!" spits Buster at a bewildered ex-train driver who asks his name, "and the pleasure's all yours."  This 90 minutes (of 180) was the criminals' tale, astonishingly aptly broadcast on the day when the real Ronnie Biggs breathed his last.  It was entertainingly tense, despite the outcome being known, presumably, by the majority of the audience.  There was no attempt to give the Reynolds gang hearts of gold or good intentions, but the line about not taking guns rings hollow in the wake of the train driver's fate.  These were men who took pride in their criminal 'careers', prepared to use violence to get rich without honest work and, far from meticulously planning to the last detail, they left too much to chance to get away with it.  In the days of DNA and other advanced forensic evidence, they'd have been lucky to get to Reigate, let alone Rio.

Maybe that's a more palatable explanation for Britain's fascination with them: from the Gunpowder Plot to the Dunkerque evacuation, it's not exactly victories we seem to love to celebrate, but near-misses.

Appropriate Adult - conclusion

The second and concluding part of ‘Appropriate Adult’ was (once again) unable to maintain the standard of the opener and in this case it seems to highlight the difficulty of dramatizing factual events and the inevitable blurring of boundaries.  Here would seem to be one retelling that needs to be accurate, not only out of respect to those whose lives have been blighted, but also because invention could add nothing to an already ghoulish chain of events.  Yet we hear that some details were wrong and suspect there are other errors.  Janet Leach’s children were not living with her through the investigation and trial, according to her eldest son, and would she have been allowed so much unsupervised access to Fred West?

What these misgivings give rise to is a general feeling of discomfort.  It was far more obviously Leach’s subjective view of events this time around, and weaker as a result.  She is shown as a naive and needy woman, it’s true, but one who commits perjury by denying that she has sold her story.  That same story is the one adapted here for television, so from the viewers’ perspective she is, by default, a classic unreliable narrator.

We wouldn’t dismiss the idea of creating a drama to explore the criminal, immoral and unacceptable acts of which we are capable, nor would we expect it to provide answers, but if its purpose is to promote questioning and widen understanding around this behaviour and our reactions to it, then this ultimately didn’t achieve its aims.  The impact on the victims’ families and friends, and on the Wests’ own relatives, went unexplored, and we discovered nothing of the background or motivations of either Fred or Rose.  To learn that anyone, i.e. someone who isn’t a sexually deviant serial killer, can form a toxic attachment to someone who is everything they morally reject, is no surprise. 

Appropriate Adult

On hearing that Dominic West was to play serial killer Fred West in an ITV drama, our first reaction was to ask why.  In terms of honing your craft etc. as an actor, serial killers must be good roles to get, with no dearth of talent lining up to play the likes of Crippen and Shipman.  However, with this subject matter there’s obviously a fine line between an informing and provocative drama and one that skews the truth and encourages mere morbid curiosity.  As with all matters of taste and decency, it’s hard to judge where that line should be drawn.  The names of Fred and Rose(mary) West conjure in most of us an almost primeval fear, as much, we would suggest, to do with lurid tabloid headlines and the consistent use of the same, instantly recognisable images, as with their crimes.

With regard to the crimes themselves, the details have been mostly withheld, through respect for the victims’ families and a fear of copycat behaviour that goes at least as far back as ‘On Iniquity’, published in 1967 in response to the trials of Brady and Hindley.  Very few of us are incapable of imagining horrors as terrible as those that happened at Cromwell Street, and as a result the Wests appear as modern bogeymen.  What is harder to imagine is the response of the victims’ families to a dramatisation of what is probably the worst thing ever to happen to them.  How could anyone else presume to suggest that it is good to remember, rather than to forget, or that a dramatic re-enactment will provide any sort of catharsis?  How could it avoid being deeply upsetting?

According to ITV, an early decision was taken not to portray the crimes, but to centre on the investigation, and in particular the appropriate adult of the title, who provides the everyman response to the discoveries.  This largely voids the voyeur argument and doesn’t detract from the shocking nature of these events.  Some viewers may object to the portrayal of Fred as a man with a roguish charm, every inch (or playing?) the yokel as he flirts with and manipulates Janet Leach, evades questions, or describes matter-of-factly how he dismembered his daughter.  Apparently it’s an accurate portrayal.  We're on slightly shakier ground with Ms Leach, who despite her fear and revulsion won't give up the case, and subsequently sold her story to a tabloid for a six-figure sum.

There was also humour in last night’s first half, the sort of gallows humour to be found in crime dramas and also, one suspects, in police stations and prisons all over the country.  “We’re here to search for the remains of your first wife, Fred,” says DC Savage (Sylvestra Le Touzel, compelling as always) as West waxes lyrical on the beautiful Gloucestershire countryside where he has buried her.  Dominic West and Monica Dolan as Fred and Rose are entirely believable, while Emily Watson, rather less mousy and more glamorous than she is playing, nonetheless conveys the bewilderment of someone fresh from training, immersed in a complicated family of her own, and out of her depth with what she must now face.

There will probably never be consensus on fictional depictions of real crimes, with real victims.  We would tend, generally, to prefer documentaries about something so recent and so sensitive.  'Five Daughters', shown early last year, won general acclaim by focusing entirely on the lives of the victims and the subsequent effects on their families, something that doesn't feature at all in 'Appropriate Adult'.  However, what this drama has done is to humanise demons: people who have families, children, homes and jobs, and live superficially innocuous lives are capable of the most extreme, violent, disgusting acts.  Seeing the Wests as something removed, something ‘other’, misplaces a fear which, disturbingly, should be much closer to home.