CAT AND MOUSE: TV Serial Killers

As the crime drama Rellik continues (9pm, BBC1) – and the story unfolds in reverse – we take a look at some of TV’s most chilling and memorable multiple murderers…

Dexter Morgan For obvious reasons, it’s unusual for killers to be the heroes of a drama, but that’s the case in Dexter (2006-13). As a boy Dexter had pyschopathic impulses, so his adopted dad trained him to kill vigilante style, to rid the world of criminals far worse than himself. In his day job as a forensic blood spatter analyst, Dexter (Michael C. Hall, right) also knows how to keep his crime scenes clean.

Hannibal Lecter The cannibal killer from the books by Thomas Harris is portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen in the TV series Hannibal (2013-15). A smartly dressed Lecter works as a consultant with the FBI and as a therapist for troubled

FBI agent Will Graham. Paul Spector Over three series of The Fall

(2013-16), Gillian Anderson’s detective

Stella Gibson chased Jamie Dornan’s methodical Paul Spector, who led a double life as a family man and obsessive killer. Theirs was one of TV’s more complex cat-and-mouse relationships. Mary Ann Cotton Reassuringly, all of the other killers on our list have been fictional, but Mary Ann Cotton was real. Joanne Froggatt starred as Cotton (left) in Dark Angel (2016), a two-part dramatisation of her grim story. Historians speculate she may have had as many as 21 victims, 13 of them her own children.