Originally called My Name is Lizzie this drama focuses on the story of Sadie Brynes (Niam Algar, who is excellent) who is an undercover British female Police Officer, a social climber, seeking advancement in both career and personal relationships. Working undercover on a drugs ring the opening sequence proves she's prepared to do anything to get the job done, including willingly sleeping with a dealer. It's 1992 and it's not fun being a WPC in a male dominated Police Force. Yet despite the force being institutionally racist at the time, we're also led to believe, the applauded officer on her team is black. Unfortunately rather than focusing on the real issues of this terrible and tragic case, this version of the narrative feels like a box ticking exercise.
The focus of the story then becomes the real life murder of Rachel Nickell, brutally murdered on Wimbledon Common in 1992. I won't go into spoilers here beyond to say a honey trap is set with officer Brynes posing as the bait, overseen by the pompous self important psychologist Paul Britton (Eddie Marsan, excellent, as always but he doesn't really nail the real Brittons tone or arrogance and feels too remote) So Brynes poses as Lizzie and writes letters to suspect number one Colin Stagg.
Many Liberties are taken with the truth here. Brynes wandering into a confused nickell inquiry room is a complete fiction, she was not introduced in this way. Peddar says he called Britton in to the case, but that decision was taken by Bassett, his commanding officer. Not by Peddar. There's a great deal of tell don't show. Peddar with fag in hand (Treadway, completely miscast) is seen briefing the officer on what to do, but it was Britton who did that from the outset. There's much quoting of Stagg's fantasy letters, but rarely put into proper context of the letters which Britton wrote, that preceded these, constantly demanding him to speak of such fantasties. I understand this is to create a certain suspension of disbelief, but it fails to show how flawed the whole operation was in its inception from the beginning.
Above all, the greatest insult of this drama is that this is Colin Stagg's story. He was persecuted by not just the Police but Brynes herself, (not her real name, better known by her codename Lizzie James) who was prepared to do anything to nail him, not just to close the case, but also advance her own career. Many details here are left out to make the leading female more sympathetic. How can you mention Stagg's compensation payout at the end of the film, but not mention the one that Lizzie James received, which was the largest of it's type at the time and she got hers over a decade before Stagg got anything.
Brynes had several chances to turn around to say her bosses 'You know, I don't think this is the guy... even when it was obvious that he was not the killer...' She didn't. The show intimates that Brynes herself wrote the letters to Stagg, they were scripted by Britton, she merely copied them out. There is much suggestion of Brynes living alone in dark rooms, getting into character, where the truth is she was in a relationship and went home every night. There's a shot where Brynes see's Rachel's boyfriend Andre Hanscombe and son about to go into court to suggest some unspoken bond between them. This never happened and is a complete fiction. The recreation of the first phone call between Stagg and the officer, is so bias its purely to serve an agenda. The words are nearly correct, but the call was accidentally cut, the officer did not hang up, and Stagg's tone was nothing like as portrayed. Clips of this phone call are on various documentaries on this subject, Stagg was nothing like this. .
There was a chance to tell a real compelling story here, exploring the full issues of what went wrong with this case. Instead we have a women's issues drama where all men are evil, arrogant or incompetent, and it's not that such a narrative about a female officer isn't compelling and shouldn't be explored, but not at the expense of the truth. Stagg might not have made for so easy a hero, all the more reason to tell his story and this is his story.
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