This format of drama - particularly on ITV - either morbidly fixating on real-life serial killers or dour semi fictions are usually chokingly bleak and not at all interesting. So I was rather surprised by this deft three-parter - which had a fascinatingly brisk pace. I wasn't at all familiar with Nilsen's sad crimes and rather than glamourising him or them it takes quite an even-handed approach to the figures involved - essentially acting as much as a look at biographer Brian Masters or the dogged DCI Peter Jay.
The performances are the real draw here - with much being said on Tennant's underplayed and absorbing portrayal of the manipulative Nilsen. His second murderous creep in a year and a mesmerically different take than his deceptive GP in Deadwater Fell. I'm a huge fan of Daniel Mays and he does a typically sharp turn as the starkly determined Jay - and you almost can't get these kind of things made without Jason Watkins showing up and his mannered performance here easily matches up to the big hitters.
I'd say the only snag for me is the name and the marketing. It's Des. Dennis Nilsen is centre stage in the marketing - but within the text of the show you even see Masters deny Nilsen's desire to have the book named after him - and this very much isn't his story as much as it is Jay's push for justice or Masters' clinical drive for objectivity or even those poor lost and lonely men lured to their deaths with the promise of company. So it seems fundamentally wrong to me to name it in such a way, even if Tennant's transformative performance is the central marketing drive it feels morbidly vulgar to essentially grant Nilsen his wish.
The performances are the real draw here - with much being said on Tennant's underplayed and absorbing portrayal of the manipulative Nilsen. His second murderous creep in a year and a mesmerically different take than his deceptive GP in Deadwater Fell. I'm a huge fan of Daniel Mays and he does a typically sharp turn as the starkly determined Jay - and you almost can't get these kind of things made without Jason Watkins showing up and his mannered performance here easily matches up to the big hitters.
I'd say the only snag for me is the name and the marketing. It's Des. Dennis Nilsen is centre stage in the marketing - but within the text of the show you even see Masters deny Nilsen's desire to have the book named after him - and this very much isn't his story as much as it is Jay's push for justice or Masters' clinical drive for objectivity or even those poor lost and lonely men lured to their deaths with the promise of company. So it seems fundamentally wrong to me to name it in such a way, even if Tennant's transformative performance is the central marketing drive it feels morbidly vulgar to essentially grant Nilsen his wish.