Crime

Working Lives: Drama reconstruction

A man holds his arms out, panically trying to assure two people a few feet away from him, wearing body armour and pointing guns at him

In her spare time, she makes films: last year, she produced the Second World War action movie Fortunes of War.

What does your job involve?

Alongside the drama director, I break down a documentary’s script to work out what needs dramatising and find suitable locations. The two of us also watch audition tapes together to decide on the actors we’re going to use in the reconstructions.

Stars from Bridgerton, Bodyguard and Showtrial in first look images for The Red King

The six-part series stars Anjli Mohindra (Bodyguard) as Grace Narayan, a once successful police sergeant who has been forced into a “punishment post” on an obscure and sequestered island. When Narayan begins investigating the unsolved case of a missing teenager, what at first glance appears as a gritty police thriller, drifts into folk horror upon the unearthing of a bygone cult called True Way. Narayan comes to realise the cult, and its dedication to pagan god the ‘Red King’, are not as confined to the island’s past as it first appears.

RTS Scotland host speed-networking session for scripted TV

The “speed-networking” format, where industry professionals visited tables with seven minutes to speak to attendees, was used again at the packed-out event at BBC Studios in Glasgow.

Tony Wood, CEO of Buccaneer Media, spoke about his decision to expand the company to Scotland: “Television is controlled by London and that seemed to me to be a shame. So, on the spur of the moment, I agreed with Screen Scotland to set up a production company here.

Dougray Scott back on the case with new cast in series two of Irvine Welsh's Crime

The six-part series will see Dougray Scott reprise his role as troubled detective DI Ray Lennox, after his unhinged portrayal in series one garnered a recent nomination for an International Emmy.

Following his breakdown after bringing Mr Confectioner to justice in series one, Lennox returns to Edinburgh Serious Crimes ready to prove his recovery. But in the interim, Chief Superintendent Bob Toal (Ken Stott) has lost his mojo and Lennox's partner Amanda Drummond (Joanna Vanderham) has been promoted.

Irvine Welsh on Crime: his new police drama blurring the thin blue line

Set in Miami, the novel follows the hardened but fragile Detective Ray Lennox as he flees to the city to take his mind off a harrowing child rape-murder case back in Edinburgh. It was proving too costly a prospect for producers, says Welsh, until he took the case itself and drew out the six-part series from there.

The author is no stranger to screens having had success in cinema with four adaptations of his novels, including the box office smash and decade-defining Trainspotting (1996). Although, he admits, “you can get a bit comfortable and keep trying to replicate it.”

TV Picks: 15th - 21st November

Daniel Henney and Rosamund Pike in The Wheel of Time (credit: Prime Video)

The People v Climate Change 

Tuesday 16 November 

BBC Two, 8pm 

The UK government has made bold claims and promises about the changes we need to make to help reverse climate change and save the planet.

This documentary follows the members of the UK’s first ever Citizen’s Assembly on Climate Change, which saw 108 ordinary people come together to decide what needs to be done to meet our climate change goals. 

Ashley John Baptiste to present new BBC Daytime series Expert Witness

The series will reveal the inside stories of some of the UK’s most complex major crime cases, and how expert witnesses helped crack them using forensic science.

Each episode will see Baptiste explore two different cases, and hear from those who solved them. Among those featured are The World’s End murders of 1977, one of Scotland’s longest running investigations, the Rochdale Ripper, who was captured using forensic imaging, and two crimes solved by the examination of pollen at a murder, and fibres in a car crash.

Watch the trailer for Apple TV+'s new thriller starring Chris Evans

Based on the novel by William Landay, the series was created and written by Mark Bomback.

The series is set in small Massachusetts town, and focuses on assistant district attorney Andy Barber (Chris Evans), whose life is thrown into disarray when his 14-year-old son Jacob (Jaeden Martell) is accused of murdering another child from his class.

The crime has consequences for the whole town and witnesses who claim Jacob did it say he looked “smug and remorseless”.

Jenna Coleman joins new BBC and Netflix crime drama The Serpent

Jenna Coleman, Billy Howle, Ellie Bamber (Credit: BBC)

They join Tahar Rahim (The Looming Tower) who will play real life serial killer Charles Sobhraj, one of the most evasive criminals of the 20th century.

The series, written by Richard Warlow and Toby Finlay, follows Sobhraj’s murderous spree, which was estimated to have taken place between 1975 and 1976 across India, Thailand and Nepal’s ‘Hippie Trail’.

He was the chief suspect in almost 20 unsolved murders of young Western travellers during this time and by 1976 was Interpol’s most wanted man, with arrest warrants on three different continents.