IT’S A STORY I’VE WANTED TO TELL SINCE THE REAL TRIAL

BASED on real events, factual drama Responsible Child tells the story of 12-year-old Ray and his 23-year-old brother

Nathan, who are arrested after stabbing their mother’s partner.

Whatever the circumstances that have led a child to kill, the law is clear: the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales is 10, and therefore Ray must stand trial in an adult court.

Told in two time frames, the film follows events leading up to the murder and the drama of the trial, taking us inside a young boy’s experience of the legal system and asking powerful questions about responsibility and redemption.

Director and BAFTAwinning documentarymaker Nick Holt become entangled in this side of the law while researching for his hit TV documentary The Murder Trial in 2013.

“I saw a very young child going into court and asked whether this child would be giving evidence. And the lawyer said, ‘He’s the accused’.

“It came as quite a shock!” admits the BAFTAwinning documentarymaker.

“I began researching the minimum age of criminal responsibility. Ten breaches our obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

“So this is a story I’ve wanted to tell since I attended the trial on which our film is based.”

Writer Sean Buckley echoes: “To be able to tell a very human story through the prism of a very specific world and system, you just grab hold of it.”

“We felt very early on that we wanted to take Ray mindset of a barrister was tough; to become a woman who thinks how they think,” says Game of Thrones star Michelle, who played Catelyn Stark in the hit fantasy show.

“Nick was keen to make everything feel very real rather than a courtroom drama – seeing their process, how they rack their brains in an attempt to save someone’s life.

“Taking on that responsibility, playing both

Responsible Child is on BBC2, Monday at 9pm.

and the audience through a complete arc of the system,” Sean insists, “from his hitting custody through to serving his sentence. “So we met people from the youth offending services, people from inclusion at a secondary school, and we met child psychologists and forensic psychiatrists just to get a holistic view of Ray’s life and the [different] systems.” While 12-year-old Blinded by the Light star Billy Barratt takes the titular role of Ray, stars Michelle Fairley, Strike and The Musketeers’ actor Tom Burke, Stephen Campbell Moore and Owen McDonnell join him as the likes of his defence barrister, prosecution lawyer, courtmandated child psychologist and solicitor, respectively. “Getting into the Billy Barratt as Ray McCullin

a mother and barrister, when what happened could so easily be one of your own kids... that was tough.” As for Barratt, “He’s brilliant!” Nick declares. “But we had to be careful about the scenes that we gave him as to not overwhelm [him], and allow him an opportunity to be Ray in moments that weren’t involving a murder.” So why, as a society, are we so obsessed with true crime drama? “I think we’ve always been fascinated; if a story even has a fraction or an essence of it’s in the real world, like the ghost stories, you love to fill in the gaps,” Nick reckons. Sean adds: “It goes to the root of what is compelling about drama, which is the question of who is this person and why have they done this thing?”

Ray’s legal team led by Kerry (Michelle Fairley, left)