Dramatisation of the long police hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield takes over the investigation to track down the killer, who has brutally murdered several women in the North of England. He is confident that his techniques of using painstaking mass interviews and documentation will help catch the killer, but the killings continue and he becomes more and more frustrated. Data amasses and they have several good leads, but the team begins to be bogged down with the mounting paperwork. Oldfield also has to contend with pressures from the Chief Constable, and fear of being undermined through police force rivalries and politics, along with his distrust of colleague Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Hobson.
—Anonymous