A devastating account of incompetence and excuses
Twenty-five years on, the investigation into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence by white youths in Eltham is moribund, despite two 2012 convictions and the identities of the other four suspects being known to everyone. What the police have been missing, from their perspective, is evidence; others argue that they lacked at best the competence and at worst the desire to solve the crime.
Stephen: The Murder that Changed the Nation (BBC One), a three-part documentary from filmmakers James Rogan, Asif Kapadia and James Gay-rees (the last two Oscar winners for their Amy Winehouse documentary, Amy), began last night and was an excellent and admirably comprehensive account of the night and its aftermath.
While the attack itself was shocking enough, it was the repercussions of the ensuing investigation that continue to be felt today. Rogan and his team offered an unforgiving takedown of the institutional racism that saw the Met appearing to target witnesses to the murder as much as suspects. It took an intervention from Nelson Mandela to trigger arrests, only for the case to fall apart when Stephen’s friend Duwayne Brooks had his own run-in with the police, weeks after his evidence was discredited by the CPS.
The wish of his mother, Doreen, that “people can see [Stephen] had a life not just in death, but before” was understandable, and Rogan, who directed, celebrated an ordinary, happy, popular young man living an average 18-year-old’s life of study, sport and socialising. Yet he also provided plenty of context, summoning the poisonous atmosphere of early Nineties Eltham, a BNP stronghold where racially motivated stabbings were common and convictions scarce.
Rogan smartly kept the framework simple, mounting a grim collage of archive newsreel, top-notch reconstructions drawn from Paul Greengrass’s Bafta-winning TV film The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, and fresh interviews with everyone from parents Doreen and Neville to friends and neighbours to the officers responsible for the investigation. There was no editorialising, but then none was needed when the latter’s explanations for, say, the failure to surveil key suspects, were so unconvincing, even 25 years later.
The next two parts will doubtless be compelling viewing, although I wonder if the title could benefit from a question mark at the end. Racial prejudice is still apparent for anyone with an ear for dog whistles; the ongoing epidemic of stabbings and murders in London may have been committed by gang members rather than racists, but the failings of police and politicians when it comes to the black community are all too familiar. Only this time, we don’t have Mandela around to jolt them into action.
Millennials, eh? Entitled, workshy, thin-skinned… What better way to prove otherwise than for two willing thirtysomethings to be plucked from dead-end office jobs and dull personal lives by “life-change experts” and sent to work in picturesque locations? Well, Charlie and Katie had clearly never before seen a show like Paradise
Hunters (Channel 4), where participants routinely find themselves griping to camera in unappealing fashion, their hubris shaken to its foundations for our viewing pleasure. Nor, did it seem, had they considered researching what it might be like to be a ranch-hand in Mexico (Katie) or a salmon farmer in the Scottish Highlands (Charlie). “It does sound like something that’s going to be outdoors,” reckoned Charlie sagely. Still, what was the worst that could happen?
In Katie’s case, it was dealing with big spiders, recalcitrant horses and a passive-aggressive boss who tried in vain to prise open her carapace of defensiveness as though she were a stubborn steed (“I’m trying to break her, it’s not working!”). For Charlie, it was simply back-breaking boredom in a small town.
I’ve lost count of the number of series that have trodden a similar path, but the casting here was so spot-on that it never felt too tired.
The transformations weren’t total, either. It did seem particularly craven of Charlie to accept a full-time management trainee position from amiable, endlessly tolerant owner Gilpin, only to slope back to his mum’s, change his mind and go to Canada instead. Katie, to her credit, opened up, knuckled down and even returned for two more months in the hope of securing a permanent position. Paradise lost and paradise postponed, then.
Stephen: The Murder that Changed the Nation★★★★★ Paradise Hunters