Underneath What:Steeltown Murders.

Badfinger tribute bands in smoky pubs where unreconstructed men drink pints with handles, kipper ties, vests, collars that could take your eye out, fish fingers, siderburns, Reliant Robins, Austin 1100s, rugby, and brown. So much brown. Brown leather jackets, brown shoes, brown cars, brown office furniture, brown curtains. Even the skies are kind of brown. Steeltown Murders (BBC1/iPlayer, written by Ed Whitmore and directed by Marc Evans) is filmed with a covering of sepia so dense (especially when the action goes back to the 1970s) that there's almost a hauntological vibe to the whole thing.

By the end you'll feel as if you've just listened to The Caretaker's entire haunted ballroom trilogy. But, at the same time, you'll have been treated to a hugely compelling, addictive, and, sometimes - often when you least expect it - emotional drama.

Steeltown Murders tells the real life story of a series of rapes and murders in and around Port Talbot near Swansea in 1973 and the reopening of the case in 2002 when new DNA evidence was unearthed. The rape and murder of sixteen year old Sandra Newton and the double rape and murder, two months later of Geraldine Hughes (Calista Davies) and Pauline Floyd (Jade Croot) after leaving the Top Rank nightclub in Swansea. Geraldine and Pauline were also both sixteen.

DSI Jackie Roberts (Karen Paullada) appoints DCI Paul Bethell (Philip Glenister/Scott Arthur - many of the characters are played by two different actors in each timeline and in such cases I've named the 2002 actor first and the 1973 one second) to lead the investigation and Bethell, who'd hoped to head up a much bigger team, calls up his old colleague DC Phil 'Bach' Rees (Steffan Rhodri (Dave Coaches from Gavin & Stacey)/Sion Alun Davies) and DC Geraint Bale (Gareth John Bale), a man too young to have been involved first time around.

Bethell, himself, has some demons and regrets regarding the case and is clearly seeking his own personal redemption (in this, Glenister reminds me of his older brother Robert in last year's Sherwood) as well as justice. Back in 1973, Bethell had believed that Sandra's murder at the hands of man who was dubbed the 'Saturday Night Strangler', should have been linked to those of Geraldine and Pauline but he was overruled on that by his authoritative, unlistening, and borderline bully of a boss DCS Ray Allen (Oliver Ryan) and the boozy joker DI Tony Warren (Steve Nicolson).

Time proved Bethell right about the case but, elsewhere, his tunnel vision leads him into trouble and, ultimately, the murderer was never brought to justice. Many of the cops suspected Sandra's married on-off boyfriend John Dilwyn Morgan (Rhodri Miles/Ben McGregor) but others, Bethell included, felt that Sandra's stepfather Dai Williams (Keith Allen/Rhys Rusbatch), a taxi driver, was the most likely culprit. Both men, in their small community, ended up being tried in the court of public opinion and suffered years of misery for a crime they had not committed.

The focus, initially, was on Geraldine and Pauline and less on Sandra. Because Sandra was sexually active the police took rape off the table which is shocking even for the police. Even in the 1970s. When the cases are, nearly thirty years later, finally officially linked it becomes clear that the hunt now is for a serial killer.

Under the shadow of the huge industrial steelworks complex, the hunt takes in the targeted swabbing of hundreds of men, press interference, double allels (I had to look that up on Wikipedia and so can you), a Dutch psyhic (Mr Croiset, played by Walter van Dyk) in a bowtie, budget cuts and lack of police resources, exhumation of dead bodies, and the danger of dredging up terrible memories for lots of people as well as the danger of repeating the same mistakes made first time around. Or even making some new mistakes. It will involve, as more than one character says, "a lot of shoe leather".

The police of the 1970s are shown to be heavy handed and to, far too often, act on personal biases and suspicions. Often they seem more interested in drinking and smoking than doing their job but, hey, it was a different time. As the soundtrack of Status Quo, Mott The Hoople, and Free makes abundantly clear.

Priyanga Burford is superb as Geradline and Pauline's friend Sita Anwar (played as a teenage girl by Natasha Vasandani - also very good). Now a headmaster, Sita is crucial to both the development of the plot and features in many of the most moving scenes in Steeltown Murders. Like Bethell, she has carried unnecessary guilt with her for decades and is looking for something like closure with the reopening of the investigation.

Both Paul Bethell's and Sita Anwar's personal storyline arcs, much of Bethell's comes out in expositional scenes with his wife Karina (Nia Roberts/Elinor Crawley), make for good, great even, drama but I did wonder about the veracity of them. There does seem to be an element of speculation at play here.

But if that's what's needed to tell this story so be it. It didn't seem exploitative and added another layer of humanity to a story that was already full of emotion. With a suitably ominous score courtesy of Sarah Warne and noteworthy performances by Richard Harrington as forensic scientist Dr Colin Dark, Sharon Morgan as Dai's wife Pat, William Thomas (and Grufudd Glyn) as Geraldine's father Denver, and Aneurin Barnard and Nicholas McGaughey as suspects Joseph Kappen and Thomas Willoughby, Steeltown Murders is a well put together ensemble piece that takes an episode to get into but then flies by.

There's not a lot of humour (though there is a very dark scene about how a rapist smelt so strongly of tobacco that his victim's mother stopped smoking - so at least some good came out of it) and nor should there be with this kind of subject matter. There are a lot of scenes where people who'd received the worst news imaginable back in 1973 are now faced with the prospect of receiving yet more bad news. Or, maybe, some news that's almost good. You'll be desperate for Bethell and Rees to solve the case and see justice done and even if you know how this story panned out in real life you'll still want to watch Steeltown Murders right to the end. Though you probably won't find yourself hankering after the 1970s much.

Walkin' The Dog:Darren Hayman @ ArtDog.

"Walkin' the dog, just a-walkin' the dog. If you don't know how to do it I'll show you how to walk the dog" - Walkin' The Dog, Rufus Thomas

HE USED TO SHOUT THINGS 

I know Darren Hayman as a musician. As the singer of Hefner and, latterly, as an interesting solo artist who I once saw perform at Dalston's Vortex (a gig that featured a Secret Santa as it was Christmas) and who once recorded an album where each song was dedicated to a different lido in London and elsewhere. Including Brockwell Park and Tooting BEC, my two local lidos.

But I didn't know Darren Hayman as an artist and that's because he's only just moved into visual art. When out walking around London late at night, Hayman considers the beauty, and mystery, of the city after dark and decided to paint it as if viewed by a succession of dog walkers. Better still, these paintings are on display (and on sale, costing roughly £400 each) in a gallery that is about ten minutes walk from my flat, ArtDog. I'd not been before.

BUT THEN HE SAID

THIS IS MY SPOT

WHAT IF WE NEVER SAID IT

They're good too. They're hardly revolutionary. In fact, for the most part, they're quiet, they're pensive and they evoke an all too familiar feeling of walking home late at night. Hayman's given them titles, ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS, that sound a bit like song titles suggesting that the songwriter in him can't be completely escaped and that he wouldn't wish to escape it either.

Walking round late at night, you'll often find a song becoming stuck in your head and I imagine Hayman has the same thing happen to him. Who knows, perhaps he'll even make an album of songs inspired by these images.

I DIDN'T MEAN TO HAUNT YOU

I CAN WAIT

I HAVE TO BUY MORE GREEN PAINT

Here are blocks of flats with rectangles and squares flooding out of the windows with the curtains closed, here is the panorama of the city skyline, here is the tram pulling into the station, and here is the 63 bus (my bus) pulling up at the stop. I wish I could make out which stop it was but I can't despite using that bus hundreds and hundreds of times.

I NEVER UNPACK

I CAN STAY AWAKE

WE'RE NOT ALONE 

Whatever, it was nice to see a 63 bus in an artwork - and it was nice to see flats that looked not unlike my own being portrayed in art as well. Rather nice art. I had a brief chat with the friendly invigilator at the gallery and then I went for a walk. In the sunshine and without a fucking dog.

I HEARD A VOICE

Freedom Trip:Isaac Julien @ Tate Britain.

"I'll tell you what freedom is to me. No fear" - Nina Simone

 

Freedom/Diasporic Dream-Space No.1 (2022)

Crikey! You'd need nearly four hours to sit through every film showing at Tate Britain as part of Isaac Julien's What Freedom Is To Me. As my ticket was for 3pm and the Tate closes at 6pm that was never an option for me and, to be honest, I'm not sure I'm patient enough anyway. Some of the films are very slow, very uneventful.

Others, however, are excellent. Julien, like many video artists, is a tricky act for me to get my head around. I always wonder if we're supposed to watch entire films or, as suggested by the gallery, to become a 'mobile spectator' and dip in and out of rooms almost at whim, taking in whatever takes our fancy. I erred more towards the latter but there's a slightly anal part of me that insisted on at least some structure.

The show starts in the foyer, you don't even need a ticket for that bit, with a bit of history about Julien (who was born, in London, in 1960) and how his art mixes poetry, video, painting, music, and even dance to tell stories about social justice, about black and gay lives and how, during his career, his art has extended into bigger, far more conceptual, pieces. While his video art began with one screen installations, they now often contain up to five or more screens. How are you supposed to watch all of them at the same time?

As it's Julien's biggest solo show to date there's even a chronology of his life and the events he's lived through. Starting in 1957 when his parents, Rosemary and Joseph, emigrated to London from St Lucia and Julien's birth three years later, the timeline goes on to take in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech, St Lucia's independence from Britain, the New Cross house fire of January 1981 in which thirteen young people died, the Black People's Day of Action which followed that fire, the death of twenty-three Chinese people working as cockle pickers in Morecambe Bay in 2004, the killing of Mark Duggan in Tottenham and the riots that followed in 2011, 2017's Grenfell Tower fire in which seventy-two people lost their lives, the Windrush Scandal, and the killing of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis three years ago.

Culturally it takes in the cultural theorist Stuart Hall, Notting Hill Carnival, and Rock Against Racism, and personally it takes in Julien being nominated for The Turner Prize in 2001, being awarded a CBE and elected a Royal Academician in 2018 and his curating of Rock My Soul at the Victoria Miro Gallery in 2019 (something I wrote about at the time).

TERRITORIES (1984)

He's seen a lot and he's done a lot. What Freedom Is To Me isn't in strict chronological order but the first work I had a look at was the second earliest one on show. 1984's TERRITORIES is an experimental documentary about Notting Hill Carnival which reflects on its history as a symbol of resistance within the Caribbean communities of London and elsewhere. It also takes in some of the police hostility that carnival goers would often experience. It captures the essence of Carnival well but it's no replacement for actually being at Carnival.

While TERRITORIES explores Julien's black identity, 1987's THIS IS NOT AN AIDS ADVERTISEMENT celebrates his queerness. It aims to look at how, under the threat of AIDS - and the negative stereotypes of gay men perpetuated in the media at the time, sexual desire in gay communities was still able to thrive. It would have been a brave piece of work at the time and it still stands up as relevant now. Even if society has, ever so slowly and still not far enough, progressed.

THIS IS NOT AN AIDS ADVERTISMENT (1987)

LOST BOUNDARIES (1986)

Some of the works on show, like LOST BOUNDARIES from 1986, I couldn't get my head round at all. They were so experimental and avant-garde that they became almost completely abstract to me. I'm not saying they're no good but I found I preferred it when Julien got political. Which in 1983's WHO KILLED COLIN ROACH? he certainly did.

Colin Roach, a black British man, was just twenty-one years old when he was shot dead at the entrance of Stoke Newington police station in 1982. The suspected police cover up that followed incited protests against racism and police violence in the UK and Julien was not the only person to tackle the Roach killing. Music by The Special AKA, The Ragga Twins, and Sinead O'Connor (who sadly died, far too young, this week) and a poem by Benjamin Zephaniah also tackled what to many looks to be a huge injustice and certainly not an isolated incident of this kind when it comes to the Metropolitan Police.

WHO KILLED COLIN ROACH? (1983)

ONCE AGAIN... (STATUES NEVER DIE) (2022)

When he's not tackling racism, homophobia, and politics (or making confusing experimental films - or both), Julien often seems to find himself looking back to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s. ONCE AGAIN... (STATUES NEVER DIE) is based around a conversation between the philosopher and educator Alan Locke and the collector and exhibitor of African material culture Albert C. Barnes and again explores black queer desire.

I must confess my ignorance and admit I don't know the slightest thing about either Locke or Barnes and very little about the Harlem Renaissance. To be honest, this piece didn't really help me. It was huge and confusing though, at times, compelling and featured statues, staircases, and talking heads. It was all a bit too much to take in. I certainly didn't last thirty-two minutes (the length of the five separate films all playing at the same time).

Richmond Barthe - Black Madonna (1961)

ONCE AGAIN... (STATUES NEVER DIE) (2022)

ONCE AGAIN... (STATUES NEVER DIE) (2022)

The next room worked much better and was, in fact - for me, the most powerful piece in the show. Two films were being shown over three screens. WESTERN UNION:SMALL BOATS and TEN THOUSAND WAVES both interrogated the experience of people's migration across countries and continents and both films do it in a moving, and all too human, way.

The reference to small boats is, of course, no accident. The furore over immigration and small boats is no new thing, this work was made in 2007 and could have been earlier, but often the debate is framed in dismissive and xenophobic terms. Many do look at it as a human tragedy but still not on the scale they really ought to. Others choose to actively celebrate people, children even, dying at the bottom of the sea. These are the people I have removed from my life.

Julien looks at what these migrations do to the people involved and but also how they leave their trace in monuments and architecture. It's most brilliantly done in the TEN THOUSAND WAVES part of the film (there's a bit of a blur between the two hence the double captioning) which responds to the Morecambe Bay tragedy of 2004 by weaving footage of contemporary China with ancient myths (the story of the goddess Mazu from Fujian province where the Chinese cockle pickers had travelled from) and also including film of the search for them went they went missing. It's tragic, it's moving but it also gives a humanity to a group of people who have been treated as a collective rather than a set of individuals.

WESTERN UNION:SMALL BOATS (2007)

TEN THOUSAND WAVES (2010)

WESTERN UNION:SMALL BOATS (2007)

TEN THOUSAND WAVES (2010)

 

WESTERN UNION:SMALL BOATS (2007)

TEN THOUSAND WAVES (2010)

WESTERN UNION:SMALL BOATS (2007)

TEN THOUSAND WAVES (2010)

 

LOOKING FOR LANGSTON may be Julien's most well known piece but, again - for me, it's not as emotionally hard hitting as TEN THOUSAND WAVES. Again, we're taken back to the Harlem Renaissance and the poet and novelist Langston Hughes. Filmed in London but set in the jazz world of 1920's Harlem, LOOKING FOR LANGSTON returns to themes touched on many years earlier in THIS IS NOT AN AIDS ADVERTISMENT.

 

Queer desire during an era of AIDS and rampant homophobia. Julien uses photography, film, and even poetry to try to break down both prejudice and boundaries between art forms. But at nearly fifty minutes long and with the gallery soon to close I simply didn't have enough time to take it all in. Another time maybe?

 

LOOKING FOR LANGSTON (1989)

LOOKING FOR LANGSTON (1989)

LESSONS OF THE HOUR takes on another historical figure, the American abolitionist, freedom fighter, activist, and writer Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). This is a good one with a little bit more narrative structure (though at times still tricky to follow). It tells of Douglass' journey, his travels to England, Scotland, and Ireland, and his campaigns against slavery.

It includes excerpts of Douglass' speeches including one in which he spoke about how photography (at the point, a recent invention) would have the power to influence human relationships and power balances. There's also a lot of shots of brooding landscapes and people riding horses. You can see, on many levels, what attracted Julien to this subject.

LESSONS OF THE HOUR (2019)

LESSONS OF THE HOUR (2019)

The Lady of the Lake (Lessons of the Hour) (2019)

LINA BO BARDI - A MARVELOUS ENTANGLEMENT (2019)

Other subjects are a little more obscure, recherche even. Lina Bo Bardi appears to have been an interesting architect (with buildings in Sao Paulo, Salvador, and Bahia) but I learned that from looking at her Wikipedia page and not at Julien's film inspired by her. Which featured the Brazilian actors Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres talking to each other about linearity and non-linearity. I found it repetitive and a bit pointless and I didn't stay for anywhere near the thirty-nine minutes the film lasted.

I couldn't. I didn't have enough time. The galleries weren't open late enough. The final room, sadly, was only moderately better. I had high hopes of VAGABONDIA as it was filmed in the very interesting Sir John Soane's Museum in London's Lincoln's Inn Fields. But the film itself, about the dreams and fantasies of conservator walking the museum at night - Night At The Museum, was visually impressive but not particularly interesting.

Which, with a couple of honourable exceptions - mentioned earlier, was roughly my experience of What Freedom Is To Me. I don't doubt Isaac Julien is an important artist making profound and multi-layered work but it's just that without some, or lots of, preparatory learning before attending the show much of it went over my head. Maybe I'm a thicko. Maybe the art is too cold. Maybe it's too demanding. I'm not sure. But if all his work was as potent as pieces like TEN THOUSAND WAVES I'd have written a very different account of my Sunday at the gallery.

VAGABONDIA (2020)

VAGABONDIA (2020)

 

 

 

Patriarch Games:How Men Came To Rule.

Catalhoyuk in southern Anatolia, modern day Turkey, was a large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city which existed for about one thousand years from 7500BC onwards. As far as archaeologists and anthropologists can tell, it seems that, in Catalhoyuk, men and women led very very similar lives. They did the same jobs, ate the same food, and were buried the same way. Relics of countless female figurines have been found. Even the height difference was minimal.

To the science journalist, broadcaster, and author Angela Saini, who visited Catalhoyuk while researching her new book about the patriarchy and its historical roots, this is evidence that the patriarchy did not come about because men, on average, are a little bit bigger and stronger than women. If that popularly held belief, and one she's keen to rebuff, was true we'd have ended up with the biggest and strongest men as world leaders. Which is not how anyone would describe Rishi Sunak, Joe Biden, or even Vladimir Putin. Two of them much smaller than the average man and one of them ageing and frail.

That's what Angela's talk, last night - for Skeptics in the Pub - Online, was all about. The Patriarchs - How Men Came To Rule The World sets out its stall pretty clearly from the off but it wasn't exactly the talk I'd expected but instead an interview, a chat even, between Angela and our host, Kat Ford from Merseyside Skeptics.

This had its pros (a more conversational nature, obviously) but it also had its cons in that sometimes it became a little digressive as is the nature of conversation. Angela, however, was very good at making sure she got the subject back on track whenever things looked in danger of drifting too far away or getting stuck in some kind of conversational cul-de-sac.

She began by reiterating the point I've made above. That anthropologists are generally in agreement that humans have not always had a male dominated society. What Angela wondered and what's she been researching bases itself on that widely held premise and asks, if so, how did the patriarchy come about? How did we get here?

Some people, out of a sense of fairness, crave equality but others, particularly those in privileged situations, crave inequality because it may give them status. Or at least the illusion of status. For these people, I find, sometimes their success is defined most vividly by the failure of others. It's not enough for them to succeed, others must fail so they can do so. I believe it's what they call a 'zero sum game'. A Venn Diagram with no intersection whatsoever.

With this in mind, we should not make the mistake of assuming that things, that our lives, will always improve or that progress will always be made. The last few years of global politics should have made it abundantly clear that we're not given chances to step forward and advance ourselves, we have to fight for them. We have to make the case for them as both the political and religious right have been doing so successfully over the last decade or so.

Though the roots of male dominated societies don't seem to extend as far back as Anatolia nine thousand years ago, the story is quite different in ancient Athens. Society there was very misogynistic, women had deep rooted and distinctly gendered roles and were not allowed to vote and the poet Hesiod (who was around, roughly, between 750BC & 650BC), a contemporary of Homer's, wrote deeply sexist material in which he blamed woman for pretty much all of the world's ills.

Most of us have met a bitter divorcee, usually in a pub, like that. But ancient Athens held a bit more sway than the guy propping up the bar of your local Wetherspoons and it became the blueprint for most modern European democracies. Patriarchal systems were exported alongside democracy and capitalism.

Even though recent translations, some of them by women - not something that happened much in the past, have found different interpretations (even of Hesiod) and discovered female writers and poets from the ancient Greek world, this has not been enough to change the received wisdom, now propagated by the controversial (for money) media commentator Jordan Peterson that men represent order and women represent chaos. An idea that doesn't even survive the most basic scrutiny.

Angela Saini is interested in fundamentally challenging the historical narrative (as well as, I'd imagine, the batshit chaos dragon theory espoused by Peterson) that the past was always, always, more patriarchal. That's simply not the case and it's observable in fairly recent history. Away from Europe and the Middle East, many societies were not organised in a patriarchal fashion until relatively recently when those ideas were imported into those societies. Often part and parcel of huge colonial projects.

Patriarchy, globally, may wear different clothes, adapt to local customs, speak different languages, and worship different Gods but none of that means it is either biologically inevitable (Angela mentioned an episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk and the gang visit a female dominated planet - the reason the females dominate is simply because they're bigger than the men) or, in any way, just the natural order of things.

The two closest living relatives to us human mammals are the chimpanzees and the bonobos. Both chimps and bonobos have slightly larger males than females but while chimp society is dominated by the males, the female bonobos take the upper hand.

Angela Saini talked, briefly, about how the word 'patriarchy' can sound monolithic, cabalistic even. As if some shadowy group of men meet in secret and plot to keep women down. But, of course, that's not the case. As with everything in life, it's far messier than that. Thousands of years of ideas (many of them completely wrong) and self-interest have led to systems of power and systems of thinking falling into place that essentially act as a grift to keep women cooking and cleaning for men. Looking after men.

I could do with someone to look after me. I'm useless at looking after myself although, some how, I'm still here. But that's because I was brought up in that culture and I didn't question it. Very probably, in fact almost certainly, because it was beneficial to me.

Angela spoke about how patriarchy can reinvent itself and remodel itself for different times and challenges. While most may see the recent reversal of the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling in America to be a highly regressive move, Angela Saini disagreed. She's not a fan of it. Far from from it. But she sees it not as a regression but as a reinvention.

A new kind of populist patriarchal move and one that finds support with many young women. Angela lives in America now and she spoke of how many women she'd seen supporting, even celebrating, this rolling back of their own reproductive rights, this enclosure of their own bodies. Have they been co-opted into a hierarchical, and deeply misogynistic, system that ultimately fails them or are they, as one commentator suggested last night, suffering from some kind of cultural Stockholm syndrome? Who knows?

But as long as there are enough women supporting the patriarchy then things won't change as quickly as I think most women (and men) I know would like them to. Other problems regarding progress come in the form of social media (Angela spoke about leaving Twitter after receiving nearly endless racial abuse and having her family threatened on the platform). If women raise their heads above the parapet either in public, or online - essentially the same thing in many ways, they are harassed, abused, and threatened by an army of cowardly trolls and that's part of the problem.

As is the fact that often well meaning people try to counter these voices by arguing with them online which results only in the negative, regressive voice being amplified (I know, I've made this silly mistake). Peripheral Twitter trolls (some of which are almost certainly bots) should not be amplified. Do not feed the trolls. Ignore them. Block them. Don't let them drag you down.

I felt the talk could have carried on a bit longer but Skeptics in the Pub - Online are, usually, pretty rigid about timings so that was pretty much it (although we also managed to touch on the Iranian Revolution of 1979 (and the one that's happening now), the Bolshevik movement in the USSR, gendering skeletons, and female hunters in the Peruvian Andes) except for a fairly lengthy Q&A session that took in everything from Boudicca, Donald Trump, Hippocrates, Margaret Thatcher, and Iain M. Banks to gender reveal parties, the Barbie movie, weaponised incompetence, ancient Mesopotamia, and male guarding (both in human and pigeon populations)!

It had been an interesting and educational talk, and a pleasant evening in front of the computer, but I have a feeling that Angela Saina's book will be even better. As for the future of the patriarchy. Well, I've no idea.

I Am Always With You:The Sixth Commandment.

The Sixth Commandment (BBC1/iPlayer, written and created by Sarah Phelps and directed by Saul Dibb) is true crime for grown ups. It's incredibly sensitively handled, there's no gore and there's no violence, but yet it's utterly compelling from the first to last minute. You'll struggle not to binge watch a programme that is, essentially, a masterclass in how to tackle this kind of subject matter.

Peter Farquhar (Timothy Spall) is an inspirational teacher at Stowe school in Buckinghamshire who lives in Maids Moreton, a quiet village nearby. A much loved man, he is reaching retirement age and is working on a book. He is also gay but he's so repressed, and so afraid the church he attends and serves as a lay preacher for will disown him, that he never acts on his impulses. He won't even look at pornography. He simply desires "to hold and to be held". He can cope with the celibacy but he is desperately lonely and years for intimacy.

Into his life comes charismatic, confident, and handsome student Ben Field (Eanna Hardwicke). Peter sees Ben as clever, enthusiastic, and delightful and he can barely stop talking about him. Ben starts to worm his way into Peter's life and Peter, happily, lets him do so. Ben's friend Martyn (Conor MacNeill) moves in to Peter's house as a lodger and Ben writes Peter a poem and begins to attend church with him.

Soon enough, Ben tells Peter he's fallen in love with him and Peter replies in kind. But the title of the programme should make it abundantly clear that all will not go smoothly. It doesn't. Peter's bliss, Peter's happiness, at finally finding love will not last forever. Or very long at all.

Ben brings Peter breakfast in bed while Peter changes his will to make Ben the main beneficiary. Then, as quickly as he fell in love, Peter falls ill and falls down the stairs. Peter does a lot of falling. But things soon get much much worse. Things get as bad as they possibly can.

Ann Moore-Martin (Anne Reid) is a near neighbour of Peter and Ben. A retired headteacher and, like Peter, a deeply religious person, she lives alone with her little dog Rosie. When Rosie dies, Ben sends Ann a card and soon he begins to inveigle his way into her life too. His creepy behaviour around older people put me in mind of Sting's Martin Taylor in Dennis Potter's Brimstone And Treacle.

Despite the huge age gap they end up in a relationship of sorts and it's not long before Ann, like Peter before her, starts having dizzy spells. Ann's niece, Ann-Marie Blake (Annabel Scholey), becomes suspicious of Ben's intentions and behaviour but Ann-Marie's husband, Simon (Ben Bailey Smith), dismisses her concerns. Ben's only being neighbourly, helping out around the house, giving Ann lifts to church. It's what any good neighbour would do.

But it's apparent to us, the viewers, from very early on that Ben's motivations are not benevolent. The drama comes in waiting for others to see that, wondering when scales will fall from eyes. Ben's malicious behaviour is made all the more disquieting by the fact all his interactions are carried out quietly, serenely, with all the grace of a deeply spiritual man. Or, indeed, a cult leader. When Peter's brother, Ian (Adrian Rawlins), and his wife, Sue (Amanda Root), are confronted with the terrible reality of the situation your heart sinks with theirs.

And what of Martyn? Is he Ben's accomplice in all this or is he simply another one of his victims? Has he been taken in by Ben? In many ways, Martyn is crucial to understanding what's going on but Martyn himself, a failed magician, doesn't give much away.

To get to the bottom of it all, we're taken on a tense, chilling, eerie, sometimes even frightening journey that takes in God delusions, communion wafers, creepy messages written on mirrors, smoothies, swingball, giddy spells, University Challenge, gaslighting, and, ultimately, Thames Valley Police in the form of DS Natalie Golding (Anna Crilly) and DCI Mark Glover (Jonathan Aris).

About halfway through the drama partly becomes a police procedural and, after that, we move to the court room. That's fine. I love police procedurals and court room dramas and here they are both done exceptionally well. That's testament to an absolutely brilliant cast (honourable mention to Sheila Hancock who plays another of Peter's neighbours, Liz) and outstanding central performances from Spall, Hardwicke, and Reid. My friend Adam described Spall, not unreasonably, as "a national treasure" and it's true. If he was a building he'd have been listed by now.

The Sixth Commandment is beautifully shot, there is space for the story to breathe and for the characters to develop but it's never too slow. In fact it's just the right pace. Almost every scene is permeated with a foreboding atmosphere that seems very much in keeping with its dark subject matter.

Ultimately, The Sixth Commandment deals with a man with a messiah complex so deadly it has turned him into a monster. A man who prayed with, and then preyed on, some of the kindest, loneliest, and most vulnerable people he could find. By the end you'll be desperate for justice to be served. But will it be?