Forget the legal inaccuracies, the irrelevant sub-plots and the intrusive commercial breaks. What really killed off ITV’s The Jury was a lack of confidence in courtroom drama. It looked promising enough. Written by the Oscar-nominated author of Frost/Nixon and The Queen, Peter Morgan, The Jury was screened over five consecutive days and starred Julie Walters …
Continue reading “The Jury: Perverting the Course of Justice”
The Metropolitan Police recently agreed to release details of all ‘murders’ (actually all homicides, including manslaughter) in the last five years following a Freedom of Information request. There are a few discrepancies with our own list of murders but these actually illuminate how the Met records each homicide. The Met already releases monthly totals and …
While the hacking scandal is dominating the news, it’s worth remembering a gruesome south London murder 24 years ago. Daniel Morgan, a 37 year-old private investigator, was hacked to death with an axe in the car park of the Golden Lion pub in Sydenham. His brother Alastair believes that Daniel was killed to stop him …
The murder scene is now a stock image of TV and film. A dishevelled detective arrives, crouches down over a dead body, spots something everybody else missed and then makes a smart comment to amuse the audience. With the viewer hooked, the music kicks in and it’s on to the title sequence. You don’t really …
This year is the 200th anniversary of the Ratcliffe Highway murders, when seven people were killed in a gratuitous frenzy in the space of 12 days. But while 19th century Londoners would have recoiled at the mention of John Williams and his crimes, they probably mean little to the city’s present day inhabitants. Likewise the …
