DOCUMENTARY

BBC4, 9pm IT’S an engaging start to this crime history documentary.

With the help of a photograph, filmmaker Gillian Pachter is reconstructing the scene of a tiny bedroom where the body of a 37-year-old man was found in 1982.

Named Andre, he had tragically taken his own life, and his body lay undiscovered for weeks.

While you wouldn’t know who he was, his mother was notorious killer Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain.

Her crime was the cold-blooded murder of her lover David Blakely in 1955 – a case that shocked the nation, but which also ultimately contributed to the abolition of the death penalty.

In this fascinating series, Gillian examines the case and considers why it still divides opinion on whether Ellis got the sentence she deserved.

The filmmaker also immediately finds glaring holes in the police investigation that brought about Ellis’s downfall. HOT NEWS Gillian with Ellis story