TV review A walk down the bleakest of memory lanes

PODCASTS have made true crime so in vogue there is a late-to-the-party scramble among big-name journalists for cases to call their own.

Last week we had Fiona Bruce and The Parachute Murder Plot; this week it was Trevor McDonald and the Killer Nurse (STV, Wednesday, 9pm).

The former News at Ten anchor revisited the case of Beverley Allitt, the nurse who murdered four children and attacked a further nine at Grantham Hospital in Lincolnshire. Her conviction was reported by McDonald during his first year on News at Ten. It was shocking then, and 25 years on it had lost none of its power to disturb.

McDonald came bearing more than a cuttings job. He had access to the police interview tapes and had lined up interviews with some of the victims, a few speaking for the first time.

Despite the programme’s factually accurate but over-the-top title, McDonald told the story in his own low-key, dignified way. Nothing else was required. He spoke to the detective who secured the conviction. Now retired, Stuart Clifton looked like he had seen it all, but this case had clearly been the hardest to bear. As we heard in the tapes, Allitt coolly denied over and over having anything to do with the spate of sudden deaths. McDonald left the audience with the knowledge that Allitt is serving her time not in a prison but in a secure hospital, a place where she can be secured and feel secure. The irony was enough to make you weep.

54 Hours (BBC4, Saturday, 9pm) was based on another true crime, a bank robbery in Gladbeck, Germany, in 1988. This two-parter, which finishes tonight, started as it went on, at a blistering pace. The thieves were discovered mid-robbery

and the City) and Shobna Gulati (Coronation Street) guest star alongside Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill.

The Little Drummer Girl (BBC1, 9pm)

Back in 1984, Diane Keaton starred in the film version of this John Le Carre book. It failed to set the box office on fire, so the story was left well alone, until now. Cramming all the nuances of the book into a film means a lot is going to get left out, so thankfully six episodes can explore the characters at greater length. The drama opens in Germany, 1979. When a bomb explodes in the diplomatic quarter of Bonn, senior Israeli intelligence agent Martin Kurtz investigates. Meanwhile in London, struggling actress Charlie