Just open your your eyes

The most obvious place to find a killer in In Plain Sight is in front of your face.

Serial killer Peter Manuel is on the run from Detective Muncie.

Serial killer Peter Manuel (Martin Compston) has served his time in three episode thriller In Plain Sight (2016, not to be confused with the US action show of the same name (2008-2012). “He’s a free man and he’s going back to his killing ways,” explains Martin. And that’s a problem for William Muncie (Douglas Henshall), the detective who helped put him behind bars to start with. “Peter and I did extensive research,” explains Douglas, who had difficulty dealing with the subject matter. “This was real, this all happened in Scotland in the 1950s – Peter Manuel was real and he was a monster!”

RILLINGTON REPEAT

If you feel like you’ve seen this kind of show before, you’re not far wrong. It’s very similar to three-part biographical drama Rillington Place (2016), the miniseries that featured

Tim Roth as real-life serial killer John Christie aka The Rillington Strangler. “It’s terribly worrying that this kind of thing took place all over the UK in the time period. These people were walking around like you and I,” says Douglas. “They were normal people doing very not-normal things!”

ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE

Like Rillington Place, In Plain Sight also filmed in historically accurate settings like the Victoria Infirmary and the Central Belt Of Scotland. “While researching, we got to go to the sites to get a better feel for the kind of people we would be playing,” adds Martin. “You walk through these places and you try to imagine the things that happened there and how those people felt, having been lured in and snuffed out.”

FAMILY AFFAIR

As to be expected, families of the real Peter Manuel were unhappy about the show being made in the first place. “And it’s totally understandable,” says Douglas, who sympathises. “They lost the people the loved to a butcher, a madman who had no remorse for anyone.”