UPDATE (15 July 2022): This second season moved much more at pace and really dispelled any reservations I had about the series. The unique nature of telling crime stories as close to the actual facts is to credit for this series being so well received. I had no idea how stringent the regulations are in the UK for dramatizing a real crime. Every person depicted in the drama had to sign off on the portrayal and the details of the case must be factual. I am giving the whole of this series an 8 (fascinating and moving) out of 10. [Real Crime Drama]

ORIGINAL REVIEW (11 July 2022): Having just finished the first season, I wanted to write down my preliminary thoughts. This is a very different kind of a police procedural, as it is meticulous in keeping it as close as possible to the events involved in actually solving these three cases. These were real crimes, 3 murders and an attempted murder committed by one man. The source material is a memoir of Colin Sutton, the lead investigator in these crimes who also collaborated in checking the accuracy of the series. As Martin Clunes, who plays Sutton, said in a Facebook Live interview, “It was a story worth telling because this is how crimes get solved. It’s not glamorous. Policemen don’t wear their best clothes to work. It takes a lot of hard, boring work, trolling through CCTV… and looking at everything.” The series was the highest rated new drama in the 2 years before it. The realism is a positive and a negative. The authenticity has a popular attraction but Clunes reminds us that it would be a mistake to forget that those girls were taken. The biggest challenge was to keep the story moving forward, dispute the tedium of the police work. It was a hard line for the production to walk. I’m giving this first season a 7 (a story worth watching) out of 10. [True Police Procedural]