This unshowy drama should be bigger than Vigil
Several months ago, when ITV announced that they would be making Manhunt: The Night Stalker, dramatising the real-life hunt for a serial rapist who attacked elderly people, I expressed reservations. There seem to be so many grim series using rape as entertainment fodder. Why, I wondered, would anyone want to see these awful crimes dramatised? Colin Sutton, the detective whose work is featured in Manhunt, responded and wrote: “I am sure that once you actually see it you will realise it is much more complex than that.”
And I’m pleased to say that I was wrong and Mr Sutton was right. There was nothing tacky or sensationalist about the programme. The crimes themselves weren’t recreated on screen. It kept a respectful distance from the victims while conveying the horror of what they went through. Like the first Manhunt drama, which followed DCI Sutton’s investigation into Levi Bellfield, its focus was on the work which went into catching a dangerous criminal.
DCI Sutton was played once again by Martin Clunes, who gives a steady, unshowy performance. The power of the drama lies not with Clunes but in the little details and the direction: the camera showing us the interior of one victim’s home, with its cosy furnishings and ornaments telling us so much about the lady who lived there.
Sutton was called in to act as a fresh pair of eyes on Operation Minstead, as the investigation was known. The attacker had been committing his crimes from 1992-2009 but successive reviews of the case had failed to make any headway. The main source of tension here was between Sutton and the detective in charge of the operation (Matt Bardock), who was wedded to the idea that methodically DNA testing everyone who matched the description would eventually elicit a result. But the only description was a black male who in 1992 was between the ages of 18 and 40, and who possibly – but only possibly – worked as a satellite installer. “That’s not a pool, that’s an ocean,” Sutton said.
Writer Ed Whitmore didn’t ramp up this suspense by having the two men at loggerheads, because that would have diverted our attention from the police work. The race to catch Minstead Man provides all the drama we need. It’s a shame that the BBC’S Vigil, with its laughably bad heroine (hello Suranne Jones, trying to avert a nuclear missile launch) will get 10 times the attention of Manhunt, which is in all ways a superior detective drama.
The opening anecdote in Hawking: Can You Hear Me? (Sky Documentaries) was well chosen, because it told you so much about the subject of this documentary, Prof Stephen Hawking. Peter Guzzardi, who edited A Brief History of Time, described their first meeting. It took place in a hotel car park, where Hawking’s assistant helped him into his wheelchair. Hawking “literally did a 360 and shot off across the parking lot”, recalled Guzzardi. When he finally caught up, Guzzardi attempted some pleasantries, then waited to hear the assistant translate Hawking’s reply. It was: “Where’s the contract?”
Thus began an insightful profile of an extraordinary man. His genius is in no doubt, but the documentary concentrated on the personal: his disability and his close relationships. His first wife, Jane, and their three children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, were among the contributors, and they didn’t sugarcoat the story.
It was a complex portrait, neither hagiography nor hatchet job, but something that felt deeply honest. Hawking adored his children and yet – like many very driven men – wished to devote himself to work and not be concerned with the mundanity of day-to-day life. Raising three children while caring for a husband with profound disabilities took its toll on the family. Jane put it starkly: “The impression that we gave was one of a very successful family… but sometimes I was so depressed I just felt like throwing myself in the river.”
The picture was complicated by Jane’s relationship with another man, Jonathan Hellyer Jones, and Hawking leaving the family for his nurse, Elaine Mason. Lucy recalled the “brutal” moment that Hawking gave the children their Christmas presents then announced he was moving out. But the programme-makers provided some degree of balance: contributors who praised Mason for bringing happiness to Hawking’s life; Hawking’s sister, who clearly has little love for Jane. Mason declined to take part.
It may have highlighted his faults, but the documentary also captured Hawking’s humour and sense of mischief. And as his daughter said: “One of the likeable and heartwarming things about him is that he is in many ways the opposite of an ivory tower genius – he’s a real human being.”
Manhunt: The Night Stalker ★★★★ Hawking: Can You Hear Me? ★★★★