4 x 1 hour
Led by BAFTA nominee Niamh Algar and Eddie Marsan, and produced by Story Films, the team behind the acclaimed true-crime drama The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, this true story examines the complicated and toxic sexual politics of the early ‘90s and the police’s obsession with the wrong man during a high-pressure investigation into the devastating murder of Rachel Nickell, a young mother, brutally attacked in front of her two-year-old son on Wimbledon Common in London in 1992.
Incessant media headlines and public interest fuel a climate of fear and a national obsession with catching the killer before he strikes again. The police are under enormous pressure and Criminal Profiler Paul Britton (Eddie Marsan) and Detective Inspector Keith Pedder (Harry Treadaway) devise a highly unique and dangerous undercover operation fronted by an ambitious female officer, Sadie Byrne (Niamh Algar).
Based on only circumstantial evidence she is tasked with forming a relationship with the prime suspect, a self-confessed lonely man who lives close to the scene of the crime by the name of Colin Stagg (Sion Daniel Young). If Sadie can win his trust they believe he may disclose his involvement in Rachel’s murder. Carefully guided by the criminal profiler, Sadie adopts the persona of “Lizzie James” a woman with a dark secret in her past and is tasked with becoming sexual bate to trap an innocent man, beginning one of the most controversial operations in Met Police history.
