An RTS panel explores why we love true crime television and the genre's enduring success.
Speakers
Jo Clinton Davis, Controller of Popular Factual for ITV and commissioner of shows including An Hour to Catch a Killer with Trevor Mcdonald and the Crime and Punishment strand
Helen Tonge, Managing Director & Executive Producer of Manchester based production company. Title Role TV, producer of Crimes That Shook Britain
The country is in the grip of an escalating crime wave, yet the public can’t get enough of it. Viewers used to get their vicarious thrills from fictional detective drama – now we are becoming fixated on real-life serial killers and violent psychopaths.
This autumn, True Crime on Channel 4 is set to join the Channel 4 family – and go up against two existing bespoke true-crime channels, A+E Networks UK’s Crime + Investigation and Sky Crime.
Here are our top picks.
This documentary examines the case of The Central Park Five, which was recently turned into a Netflix drama miniseries called When They See Us.
The shocking and heartbreaking documentary tells the story of a 28-year-old white female jogger, Trisha Meili, who was beaten, raped and left for dead in New York’s Central Park in 1989.
Five young black and Latino boys aged 14-16 years old were accused and convicted of the crime.
Murderers – even serial killers – are made, not born. This is the thesis of new Crime+Investigation series Making a Monster, which offers a fresh take on the increasingly popular true-crime genre.
The series elicits the views of leading psychologists, interwoven with dramatic reconstructions, as it revisits the crimes of notorious killers, who include Rose West, Levi Bellfield and Aileen Wuornos.
Experts Dan Korn, VP Programming at A+E Networks UK, Dr Julian Boon, Chartered Forensic Psychologist at University of Leicester, Professor Paul Britton, Criminal Profiler at Birmingham City University and Dr Samantha Lundrigan, Investigative Criminal Psychologist at Anglia Ruskin University, discuss the psychology of serial killers at the screening and Q&A of crime series Making a Monster.
The series will be written and directed by Tobias Lindholm (Mindhunter), who received an Oscar nomination in 2016 for his film A War.
The Investigation follows the real-life investigation undertaken by the Head of Homicide for Copenhagen Police, Jens Møller, into the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall in 2017.
