Saturday 10 December 2016

TV Review: IN PLAIN SIGHT + THIS IS US

This article was originally published in The Dundee Courier on 10 December 2016.


IN PLAIN SIGHT: Wednesday, STV

THIS IS US: Tuesday, Channel 4


 What with Reg Christie on BBC One and Peter Manuel on ITV, we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to post-war serial killers this Christmas. Nothing encapsulates the spirit of the season more than murderous psychopaths.

Spread over three episodes, IN PLAIN SIGHT stars Martin Compston as Lanarkshire-based Manuel, who was convicted of murdering seven people between 1956 and his final arrest in 1958. His toll accounted for almost a third of the people murdered in Scotland during that time.

It also stars Douglas Henshall as Detective William Muncie, the unsung hero who doggedly pursued Manuel. As the body-count rose following Manuel’s release, Muncie had no doubts about the killer’s identity. And yet Manuel, through sheer, brazen cunning, repeatedly eluded capture.

They first met in 1946, when Muncie arrested Manuel, then only nineteen, for a string of burglaries and sexual assaults.

According to the screenplay by Nick Stevens, Manuel never forgave Muncie for sending him to prison for nine years, hence why he took such perverse pleasure in openly taunting the policeman during his subsequent killing spree.


Although there’s no such thing as a typical psychopath, Manuel embodied the grandiloquent delusions of genius and untouchability we commonly associate with serial killers. Of course, that’s because the likes of Manuel have influenced generations of crime fiction authors.

It’s therefore tempting to suspect that Stevens has packaged a real-life case into a straightforward tale of good versus evil. Or is it that we’re so used to fictional narratives along these lines, we’ve forgotten that such black-and-white cases do actually exist? To paraphrase a cliché, sometimes truth is more horrifying than fiction.

Stevens has apparently done his research, and – bearing in mind that relatives of Manuel’s victims are still alive - he should be commended for leaving those murders to the imagination. They’re alluded to, but never shown. The scene in which he terrorised a young girl for three hours before releasing her was all we needed to fear his unhinged cruelty.

This particular case, during which Manuel successfully defended himself in court, illustrated the era’s disgraceful attitudes towards female victims of assault. Via Manuel’s manipulations, the girl was dismissed as a harlot.


Compston, to his immense credit, is authentically detestable as Manuel. No scenery was chewed in the making of this programme. His cocky smirk and sleazy facsimile of wide-boy charm are monstrous enough.

Henshall is equally understated as Muncie. Despite contending with “You’re too close to this case!” clichés, he’s thoroughly convincing as a decent man who, through thwarted experience, has sorrowfully accepted that criminally insane killers are a rare yet unknowable fact of life.

Billed as a Thirtysomething for the 21st century, THIS IS US is a risibly earnest and sentimental US drama about a group of navel-gazing 36-year-olds who happen to share the same birthday. Mired in Hallmark schmaltz, it strains towards profundity like a constipated poet.


Our cardboard archetypes are a hunky sitcom actor suffering a crisis of integrity, his overweight sister embarking on a relationship with a nice man from her Weightwatchers class, a successful businessman meeting his biological father for the first time, and – in an admittedly unexpected twist – a couple whose storyline takes place in 1980, thus providing the glue that melds these characters together.

God knows we need some uplift in these dark and depressing times, but This Is Us will only provide comfort to viewers with an unquestioning tolerance for banal, cookie-cutter wisdom.

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