A chilling real-life murder story with hints of Morse
Last night on television Michael Hogan
‘It’s like an episode of Morse, isn’t it?” pondered DI Stuart Blaik. “Antiques dealer found murdered in Oxford. Everything about it is just like fiction.” Except, of course, it wasn’t fiction. In April last year, 42-year-old antiquarian book dealer Adrian Greenwood was found dead in the doorway of his home, having been stabbed 30 times in a frenzied attack – with no suspects, no witnesses and no sign of forced entry.
Access-all-areas film Catching a Killer: The Wind in the Willows Murder (Channel 4) followed the admirable work of Thames Valley Police, as Det Supt Kevin Brown, his deputy Blaik and their team investigated who killed Greenwood – and what happened to his early edition of Kenneth Grahame’s children’s classic, worth £50,000, which had gone missing.
We watched the tireless, coffeefuelled minutiae of police work: forensics, painstaking searches, diligent inquiries, cross-checking mobile phone data with traffic cameras. It was the latter which led them to the door of Michael Danaher, 90 miles away in Peterborough.
Heavily in debt and spiralling into depression since the breakdown of his marriage, the then 50-year-old Danaher had tracked down Greenwood on auction site ebay, then viciously tortured him for the whereabouts of the valuable book.
He was no criminal genius, mind you. He’d already listed the stolen volume for sale on ebay. On Danaher’s laptop, police found a list of targets he’d researched for blackmail, kidnapping or burglary, including author Jeffrey Archer, model Kate Moss and X Factor judge Simon Cowell. Danaher had even stopped outside Greenwood’s house to take a selfie after the murder.
A jury took less than two hours to unanimously find him guilty. He was jailed for a minimum of 34 years. Yet this wasn’t merely a police procedural. Bafta-winning director Jezza Neumann’s focus widened to Danaher’s family as they discovered the devastating truth about how his life had fallen apart. Heart-wrenchingly, his 14-year-old son was very nearly called to testify against his own father.
Another week, another true crime documentary. Television can’t get enough of real-life murder. But when they’re good, they’re very, very good. This was a chilling tale, grippingly told. Almost worthy of Morse, in fact.
Woe is we. Most of us will have to work until the age of 67 before we can pack it in. Those currently under 30 will carry on grafting into their seventies. That’s a lot of miserable Monday mornings and limp lunchtime sandwiches – unless we win the lottery. At odds of 14m to one, good luck with that.
How to Retire at 40 (Channel 4) offered an early route out of the rat race. This fluffy documentary found presenter Anna Richardson – in a distinct change of gear from her other current gig, hosting nude dating show Naked Attraction – meeting people who’d found unusual ways to give up work enviably young.
Three possible paths to putting one’s feet up were identified: super-saving, trend-spotting and risk-taking. Super-saving, which involved putting aside at least half and preferably three-quarters of one’s income, looked the hardest work. Nicola from Darlington recommended the “5:2 money diet” – spending nothing at all for five days per week.
Risk-taking was the entrepreneurial route. We met 28-year-old Pippa, who made £3million last year with her nut butters (not a euphemism) and 23-year-old Adrian, who sends personalised potatoes through the post. No half-baked idea, it turns out, and he’ll soon be able to cash in his chips.
Finally, and most tenuously, came trend-spotting. This involved going halves with a friend on an investment property.
Richardson was aided by a pair of consumer journalist sidekicks: perky Sophie Morgan and smooth Rhik Samadder. The latter, making his presenting debut, showed enough promise that we’ll surely see him on our screens again soon.
Sadly, Samadder was far better than his material. This featherlight programme threw all the tricks of the factual TV trade at the screen – statistics, surveys, vox pops, video diaries, purposefully walking while talking to camera – in a futile bid to cover its flawed premise. It resulted in more of a guide to bagging bargains than retiring early.