COLD CASE DETECTIVES
ITV1, 9pm
With echoes of TV dramas such as Waking the Dead and Unforgotten, this new series follows detectives from South Wales Police as they revisit some of the real-life unsolved crimes still on their books. Their hope is that recent developments in DNA analysis might provide answers – and hard evidence – that were unavailable to officers at the time of the original investigations. As such, the focus is on murders and sexual offences. In some cases, simply examining evidence collected at the time with more up-to-date forensic science techniques yields spectacular results, such as in the case of a suspected rapist who is arrested after evading detection for 30 years. The main storyline, though, focuses on a shocking case that goes even further back: the abduction, rape and murder of six-yearold Carol Ann Stephens from Cathays, Cardiff, in 1959. As gradually becomes clear (very gradually; this otherwise admirable programme is let down by tiring, laboured efforts to string the story out), the original investigators had an extremely likely suspect in their sights. They just couldn’t gather enough evidence to convict him. After 64 years, is it too late to finally deliver justice for Carol’s family? Gerard O’donovan