No revelations, just an hour of schlock and speculation
The advance publicity for Rose West and Myra Hindley: The Untold Story (ITV) claimed it would reveal the evidence of their lesbian affair. It didn’t. There were no great revelations, unless you had hitherto considered Britain’s two most notorious female serial killers to be nice people. “What was she like as a person?” Trevor Mcdonald asked a former inmate, Linda Calvey, who had been locked up with Hindley at HMP Durham. “I didn’t like Myra. I found her to be quite a sinister character,” Calvey replied, in what you might term a statement of the bleeding obvious.
It turned out that Hindley and West developed a friendship, which may or may not have been sexual, while in the same jail. But it lasted barely six weeks, and no one featured had any evidence for it. The most interesting things here were the little details of prison life. West once flew into a rage when an arson attack on her cell nearly killed her pet budgie. The story was included to illustrate West’s temper, but I was more startled by the fact that prisoners are allowed to have pet budgies. Another inmate complained that West got favourable treatment at Low Newton prison: “Her room was like the Premier Inn.” West also has a regular prison visitor who does the phone votes on her behalf for Strictly Come Dancing contestants.
Star interviewee was Calvey, introduced by Sir Trevor as a former inmate who had served seven years for armed robbery and 18 for murder. Further investigation reveals that she shot her lover at point blank range after her hired hitman chickened out, so we’re not dealing with an angel here. But murdering and torturing children is a different league. According to Calvey, Hindley had the gall to say of West: “She killed her own children. Do I really want to mix with somebody like that?”
This was a schlocky hour of TV, which rehashed details of the women’s crimes and made a cursory attempt to link their behaviour to their troubled childhoods. Thankfully, it at least had the taste to have the transcript of the haunting tape of Lesley Ann Downey read out, rather than playing it. The programme concluded that Hindley was a master manipulator, whose very presence was chilling, while West seemed a more unlikely killer: “She was like the lady at the supermarket checkout. She almost looked like a librarian,” said another inmate, Marisa Merico. Different personalities, but both guilty of unspeakable crimes. As Merico said: “Two evils together.”
Fictional worlds need their own internal logic. In Ghosts (BBC One), a former Army captain spends each morning running a lap and trying to beat his personal best. But his time never changes. “Blast. Well, keep at it. Maybe I need to try some new stretches or something,” he harrumphs. Then someone explains: “Maybe you can’t really get any faster, because you can’t build muscle, what with you being… dead.”
Ghosts, if you missed the first series, is about a young couple (played by Charlotte Ritchie and Kiell Smithbynoe) who move into a haunted house after she unexpectedly inherits it. Button Hall is a stately pile rammed with restless spirits. There’s the Captain, an aristocrat, a Romantic poet who is very bad at poetry, a caveman, a Georgian noblewoman, a Scout leader, and a Tory MP who died in embarrassing circumstances. They squabble with each other but have learned to cohabit almost peaceably with the new owners, Alison and Mike.
The couple dream of turning Button Hall into a spa hotel, but the place is falling down around their ears. In last night’s episode, a photographer captured a ghostly apparition at the window and the footage soon went viral. Cue much interest from the press and assorted ghosthunters (“I’m a psogger,” explained one. “It’s a psychic blogger, the ‘p is silent.”)
Sensing an opportunity, Alison and Mike charged £200 a head to spend a night in the haunted house. But the ghosts went on strike, and the couple had to fake it, with predictably disastrous results.
I wish I liked Ghosts more. It’s harmless, silly fun and I would rather watch 100 episodes of this than one of the BBC’S more topical comedies. But it just doesn’t make me laugh. Smile, yes, but not laugh. Maybe it’s because most of the ghosts are veterans of Horrible Histories, the children’s series, which makes the jokes seem as if they were written with an audience of eight-year-olds in mind. Or maybe it’s because I have fond memories of Rentaghost, and find myself pining for Timothy Claypole and Miss Popov.
Rose West and Myra Hindley: The Untold Story ★★
Ghosts ★★★