A mother’s fight for justice
Sheridan Smith is imperious as a woman demanding the truth about her son’s murder from blundering police
The grief of a mother who has to bury her son is unimaginable. But how much worse still would it be to see police neglecting to investigate what happened – then witness other young men die needlessly as a result?
Starring Sheridan Smith (above) as Sarah Sak, mother of the first of the four victims of serial killer Stephen Port (Stephen Merchant, inset), the fact-based Four Lives is a powerful indictment of calamitous blunders by the Metropolitan Police.
As an inquest concluded only last month, three of the murders could very possibly have been prevented were it not for unforgivable errors by the investigating officers.
When Sak’s 23-year-old fashion designer son, Anthony Walgate, is found dead in East London in 2014 after an anonymous phone tip-off, detectives hurriedly decide this is an accidental overdose with no suspicious circumstances. Even when police discover not only that it was Port who called to report the body but also that he met Walgate through a gay dating website (as he did his other victims) they will not consider him a suspect.
As Four Lives recounts, Sarah Sak knew her son was not a drug user, and her despair only mounts as the bodies of other young gay men are found in the same area of London, and police fail to connect their deaths.
Smith is at her imperious best as we see the mounting fury of Sak over the horrendous insensitivity (and implied homophobia) of the police and their inability to listen to her pleas that they do something before another life is lost.
As for Merchant, any doubts about the casting of the comedy star are dispelled; his depiction of Port is utterly credible and, crucially, memorably chilling.
Made by producer Jeff Pope and writer Neil McKay (who together made Appropriate Adult, the acclaimed ITV drama about Fred and Rose West), this is a powerfully compelling exposé of institutional failings that, it can only be hoped, will never happen again.
Anne (Sunday, ITV, 9pm) is another fact-based drama anchored by a powerhouse portrayal of a grieving mother battling for justice.
It tells of the tragic events at Hillsborough in 1989 from the point of view of Anne Williams (Maxine Peake) who, after the death of her 15-year-old Liverpoolfan son Kevin, refuses to accept the lies that were being told and battles unceasingly for those in authority to accept culpability and tell the truth. Over four nights, it’s a deeply moving and inspirational tale of an ordinary woman who became a heroic campaigner and never gave up.