Unusual, I guess, to see a seven-part TV mini-series but that was the slightly unusual format for this latest dramatisation of the infamous Yorkshire Ripper murders of the late 70's and early 80's committed by the evil Peter Sutcliffe.
This time, the point of view is switched to mainly focus on those of the victims and their families and to a lesser extent, those also of the police Investigators and their families. None of the murders are re-enacted and Sutcliffe himself doesn't actually appear at all until midway through the second last episode.
This approach for me worked, with the viewer sharing the increasing dread of the local female population of the killer's locale as he brutally slaughtered 13 women and injured 7 others (with rumours of more in the background) in the county over a five year period before a routine car number-plate check and the quick-thinking of an on-duty cop to return to the scene of the apprehension found Sutcliffe's "tools" and nailed him as the perpetrator.
The production did a good job of recreating the era with accurate depictions of the interiors of police stations, social clubs and various people's houses, as well as the cars and fashions of the day. It also didn't shy away from exposing some of the cheap and lazy prevailing attitudes of the day which certainly seemed to colour the outlook of the police who initially seemed to disparage the plights of the growing numbers of victims because they were mostly female prostitutes.
The usually sad circumstances which forced these women to take to the streets strongly colour the early episodes with a different reason shown for every one of them. We see one survivor of a Sutcliffe attack refuse to go public in case she's identified by family, friends and colleagues as a potential prostitute, again reflecting the low perception of the women who have turned to the streets only out of dire financial need, selling themselves for as little as £5 a time.
But if these women are at last shown with overdue retrospective sympathy and understanding, the same can't be said of the pursuing police. Confused, lazy, presumptive, disorganised and often prejudicial, their years and years of failure are artfully signposted on-screen by discreetly placed time markers. Their antiquated index-card system is exposed as being wholly inadequate to cope with the threat of a serial-killer, as we learn that Sutcliffe'was interviewed several times during the investigation with his recorded links to the murders buried away in mounds of paper-work. And that's before the police made probably their biggest mistake of the whole case, being led completely astray by a callous hoaxer with a Wearside accent who wasted who knows how much time and resources in his pursuit, but who in a postscript we gratifyingly learn was eventually tracked down and convicted for wasting police time.
The ensemble acting throughout was of a high standard with the actor portraying Sutcliffe himself bearing an uncanny resemblance to the real thing and convincing the viewer of the ordinary, everyday anonymity which worked in his favour for so long.
Unsensational, realistic and compelling but above all humanely told, this did feel like the definitive dramatisation of the horrific crimes of one of Britain's worst-ever serial-killers.
