Ambush Predator:Until I Kill You.

"I'm gonna take such good care of you" - John Sweeney, to Delia Balmer

"They're ambush predators, spiders. They stay still for ages 'til their prey's forgotten that they're there amd then ........." - John Sweeney, to Delia Balmer

There are a lot of bad men in the world and those bad men often do bad things to women. There are also a lot of bad men in television programmes and films and those bad men, too, often do bad things to women. The bad man, John Sweeney (Shaun Evans), in ITV's Until I Kill You (directed by Julia Ford), is both in a television show and a real person (it's a true story with some artistic license) and he certainly does lots of very very bad things to women.

Specifically Delia Balmer (Anna Maxwell Martin). Until I Kill You is based on Delia Balmer's book Living With A Serial Killer (a spoiler in many ways) so we know she will survive him but what we don't know is how. Others, the title of Balmer's book confirms, were not so fortunate. At times, Balmer herself starts to think she's the unlucky one as he puts her through stuff that to her seems worse than death.

A lot of the stuff I'd read about Until I Kill You focuses on how Balmer isn't a particularly likeable character and how she's someone it's difficult to find sympathy for but I didn't get that at all. How could you not feel sympathy for somebody who has been beaten up, stabbed, raped multiple times, and kept prisoner (tied to her bed) in her home? Wouldn't you be at least a little bit angry if that happened to you or someone you knew? Or anyone?

Balmer is working as a nurse and living in Kentish Town in the early nineties when she runs into Sweeney on a night out with her work colleagues. Her flat is sparsely furnished (she likes to travel and never misses a chance to tell someone she's a traveller and not a tourist) and he lives in a squat with his pet tarantula. Which leads to his early warning speech about ambush predators. When he jumps out at Delia he notes that she doesn't flinch. She says she saw him coming. If only.

They're both unconventional, they're both outsiders, and they're both free spirits but where she is essentially well meaning he is not. He's jealous and he's possessive, he's constantly negging Delia, and at one of her friend's house parties he urinates in the garden in full view of the other guests. Despite this incredible lack of charm, Delia is not put off him.

If anything she likes him more for it - or perhaps she's just been very lonely. Once they've moved in together he gets worse. Much much worse. But she can't get rid of him. When she reports him to the police for his abuse they suggest she's a liar and opine that him raping her while she's tied to a bed could easily be consensual, kinky, sex.

Every now and then the action moves to a police office in Amsterdam where an American woman, Melissa Halstead, has gone missing and a mutilated body has been found in the Leidsegracht canal. Melissa Halstead was John Sweeney's ex-girlfriend. We, the viewers, discover this before Delia Balmer but she finds out soon enough and she's forced into Sweeney's world of extreme violence and disturbing artwork. What is it with these frustrated artists and their penchant for savagery.

One work friend, Leah (Amanda Wilkin), and one friendly WPC, Jane Baxter (Lucy Thackeray), do their best to help Delia but it's not easy and, ultimately, she has to use her own wits, guile, and deception to free herself from Sweeney. As is usual with an abuser, he doesn't let her go easily and even when she enters a new relationship with timid, well meaning David (Kevin Doyle), she can't fully escape Sweeney. Either physically or mentally.

It's a tense and, in places, grim drama with a decent soundtrack (The Pogues, The Sex Pistols, The Charlatans, Jimmy Cliff, Free, Simply Red) and it's a drama that will leave you feeling very frustrated about how people like John Sweeney, very destructive people, can do so much damage. I believe that almost all people are innately kind and good but the small number that aren't manage to cause a huge amount of pain to those around them and it's often women, women like Delia Balmer who make the innocent mistake of falling for them, that suffer the most. Her personality is irrelevant. Until I Kill You, thankfully, makes that abundantly clear.