I must admit, not having read or seen any of the advanced publicity for this New Year's 3-part ITV production, I wasn't aware that it was in fact a dramatisation of the taking-down of a notorious multiple murderer and rapist, where his appearance on an old low-budget darts-themed TV quiz show years before played a significant part in his eventual conviction. That was the aspect of the case I, along I suspect with many others, remember most from the news coverage at the time and found it a little strange it wasn't used in the title here.
None of the actual crimes of the perpetrator John Cooper are depicted on screen and we join the action when a new, youngish Detective Superintendent takes up the cold-case and becomes determined to go back and obtain a conviction, this time with the help of retrospective DNA evidence not in use at the time the offences were first committed. Said D.I., played by Luke Evans, assembles a small team and is determined this time to crack the case where he has only one suspect in his sights. That's Cooper, played by Keith Allen, an already jailed felon although on lesser offences and in fact soon to be released from prison to the care of his fearful wife who still lives by herself in the marital home and hasn't broken away from Cooper's malign influence. The couple also has a disowned, resentful grown-up son, who loathes his father and wants nothing to do with him, indeed it's clear that like D.I. Evans, he suspects Cooper of even darker deeds. Estranged from his mother through her ties to his dad, he lives a hand-to-mouth existence in the same small Pembrokeshire town in Wales.
Evans, a single-parent career-cop, when not fretting about his own adult son who is trying to advance a career in football, gradually assembles and dissects the historical evidence and becomes ever more convinced that Cooper is his man. It all comes down to an artist's sketch of the murder suspect which shows an unidentified man in a pair of wading shorts with shoulder-length hair but when directly questioned on these points Cooper says his son borrowed the shorts at the time and besides, he never had shoulder-length hair. The Eureka moment, (there's always a Eureka moment!) then occurs when the Chief goes into a local pub and by chance spies an old picture on the wall of Cooper in the local darts team. That's when the pub landlord remembers that Cooper made a TV appearance on the popular Sunday afternoon TV game show "Bullseye" around the time of the unsolved crimes. The tape of the show is tracked down and clearly shows Cooper's appearance now matching the witness's description. Now if only he could track down those twenty year old shorts, I mean, who keeps clothes that old, well apparently, Cooper's wife did...!
The series ends with a tense trial in court where justice is served on a snarling, still malevolent Cooper and a triumph for Evans and his team. The show was directed in an unfussy, straightforward way, as befits the seriousness of the subject matter, with thankfully no distractions from the action with, for example, lovely scenery or florid background music, or too much interference, as is usually the case in shows of this type, from the personal lives of the detectives, bar the father-son bonding between Evans and his son, which in any case can be seen as a contrast and comparison with Cooper and his own less-than-devoted son.
Evans is very good as the dogged detective and Allen is in his element as the nasty, controlling Cooper. Overlooking again, as is so often the case these days, the too obvious P.C. casting in support, this was a gritty, gripping factual reconstruction of a recent high-profile case where the police thankfully hit the bullseye and put an evil villain back in prison where he belonged..
None of the actual crimes of the perpetrator John Cooper are depicted on screen and we join the action when a new, youngish Detective Superintendent takes up the cold-case and becomes determined to go back and obtain a conviction, this time with the help of retrospective DNA evidence not in use at the time the offences were first committed. Said D.I., played by Luke Evans, assembles a small team and is determined this time to crack the case where he has only one suspect in his sights. That's Cooper, played by Keith Allen, an already jailed felon although on lesser offences and in fact soon to be released from prison to the care of his fearful wife who still lives by herself in the marital home and hasn't broken away from Cooper's malign influence. The couple also has a disowned, resentful grown-up son, who loathes his father and wants nothing to do with him, indeed it's clear that like D.I. Evans, he suspects Cooper of even darker deeds. Estranged from his mother through her ties to his dad, he lives a hand-to-mouth existence in the same small Pembrokeshire town in Wales.
Evans, a single-parent career-cop, when not fretting about his own adult son who is trying to advance a career in football, gradually assembles and dissects the historical evidence and becomes ever more convinced that Cooper is his man. It all comes down to an artist's sketch of the murder suspect which shows an unidentified man in a pair of wading shorts with shoulder-length hair but when directly questioned on these points Cooper says his son borrowed the shorts at the time and besides, he never had shoulder-length hair. The Eureka moment, (there's always a Eureka moment!) then occurs when the Chief goes into a local pub and by chance spies an old picture on the wall of Cooper in the local darts team. That's when the pub landlord remembers that Cooper made a TV appearance on the popular Sunday afternoon TV game show "Bullseye" around the time of the unsolved crimes. The tape of the show is tracked down and clearly shows Cooper's appearance now matching the witness's description. Now if only he could track down those twenty year old shorts, I mean, who keeps clothes that old, well apparently, Cooper's wife did...!
The series ends with a tense trial in court where justice is served on a snarling, still malevolent Cooper and a triumph for Evans and his team. The show was directed in an unfussy, straightforward way, as befits the seriousness of the subject matter, with thankfully no distractions from the action with, for example, lovely scenery or florid background music, or too much interference, as is usually the case in shows of this type, from the personal lives of the detectives, bar the father-son bonding between Evans and his son, which in any case can be seen as a contrast and comparison with Cooper and his own less-than-devoted son.
Evans is very good as the dogged detective and Allen is in his element as the nasty, controlling Cooper. Overlooking again, as is so often the case these days, the too obvious P.C. casting in support, this was a gritty, gripping factual reconstruction of a recent high-profile case where the police thankfully hit the bullseye and put an evil villain back in prison where he belonged..