What to watch
James Bulger: A Mother’s Story
ITV, 9.00PM
Opening with the sound of Jon Venables describing in a matter-offact manner how he and fellow 10-year-old Robert Thompson beat and stoned toddler James Bulger to death on a railway track, this documentary relives one of the most horrifying murders of the last century in often very difficult detail. Structured around an interview between Trevor Mcdonald and Bulger’s mother, Denise Fergus, it exerts an awful grip while never quite deciphering the murder itself.
Fergus recounts her unimaginable trauma, police and social workers describe their parts in the events and Mcdonald describes the trajectory of the case, from abduction to sentencing and an aftermath that has seen Fergus surround her house with CCTV cameras and Venables convicted of child pornography offences. The statements of the two killers – both, we are reminded, with troubled backgrounds – in particular are chilling: manipulative, jokey and fearful.
The resilience and courage of Fergus, meanwhile, is admirable and unflinching some 25 years on: “The day I stop speaking about James,” she explains, “is the day I join him.” Gabriel Tate