Spread over three nights, this BBC drama on the murders in Ipswich of five women in the run up to Christmas 2006 made for challenging and occasionally disturbing viewing. That time-proximity today to the actual events only heightens the required empathy and sympathy of the programme-makers to the subject matter and this it patently does, from the title of the piece onwards (the original tabloid coverage of the killings unfeelingly focused on the murdered women all being prostitutes, dehumanising the victims at a stroke).
For me, probably like most UK residents, the two most remembered TV images from the original investigation were firstly the CCTV images of one of the young women heading into the red light district on the local train, preening herself, readying herself for her "work" and just as tragically the fact that another of the victims was actually interviewed by national TV (her back to camera, obviously) before being killed the next night.
Boldly and justifiably, the drama makes no concession to the murderer at all, concentrating wholly on the lives and desperate motivations of the women themselves. There's zero sensationalism either, with the murders themselves only suggested by the killer's car ominously approaching the victims at night-time. He's duly caught at the end, but in no sense was this a conventional crime drama.
That said, I did personally find the candid insight into the drug addicted, poverty driven lives of the prostitutes disturbing and hard to stomach at times and occasionally the dialogue tended to be, although only very occasionally, maudlin and over-ripe. The ensemble acting was laudably grounded in realism, although not wholly consistent, if anything, I appreciated more the actors playing the over-run police service than those portraying either the victims or their families.
My biggest qualm however was that the story opened with one girl already murdered with no background story at all to her situation, making me wonder if her family denied the producers access to her information. For me this did however imbalance the whole, almost reducing the drama to "four daughters" but all told, this was a commendably brave approach to a difficult subject, treating its difficult central, characters by and large with honesty and dignity, as they deserved.
