Red Riding is a British crime drama limited series written by Tony Grisoni and based on the book series of the same name by David Peace. The series comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four (1999), Nineteen Seventy-Seven (2000), Nineteen Eighty (2001) and Nineteen Eighty-Three (2002), and the first, third, and fourth of these novels became three feature-length television episodes, Red Riding 1974, Red Riding 1980 and Red Riding 1983. They aired in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 beginning on 5 March 2009. The three episodes were released theatrically in the United States between 5 and 11 February 2010, by IFC Films.
The second episode of the series uses fictionalized accounts of the investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who stalked the Yorkshire area of England in the 1970s and 1980s. The name of the series is a reference to the murders and to their location, the historic county of Yorkshire being traditionally divided into three areas known as ridings.
Contents
Overview
The events take place between 1974 and 1983 and are set partially against the background of the Yorkshire Ripper killings. Set in Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, and the rest of West Yorkshire, both books and films follow several recurring fictional characters through a bleak and violent world of police corruption and organised crime. The novels and television versions blend elements of fact, fiction, and conspiracy theory into a confection dubbed "Yorkshire Noir" by some critics. They offer a chronologically fractured narrative and do not present neat resolutions.
Plot summaries
Red Riding 1974
Director: Julian Jarrold
Technique: Super 16 mm film with an aspect ratio of 16:9
Run time: 1 hour, 42 minutes
Rating: 3.07m
1974. Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield), a cocky and naïve cub reporter for The Yorkshire Post, attends a press conference led by D.Supt Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey) regarding the disappearance of ten-year-old Clare Kemplay. Dunford learns about two earlier child disappearances: Susan Ridyard in 1969, and Jeanette Garland in 1972. Suspecting a connection, dismissing police suspicions of Gypsies, and spurred on by his friend and colleague Barry Gannon (Anthony Flanagan), he decides to investigate further.
An anonymous caller informs Dunford of an attack on a Gypsy camp near Hunslet. A meeting between Dunford and DCS Bill Molloy (Warren Clarke) is marked by mutual dislike.
Clare Kemplay is found murdered on a property belonging to John Dawson (Sean Bean), an unscrupulous local real estate developer. Dawson plans to build a shopping centre, using a combination of bribery (small ownership shares) and blackmail on local councillors and the newly formed West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police (WYMP) to secure land purchases and zoning approval.
Clare Kemplay's autopsy reveals that she was tortured, raped and strangled, and her killer stitched swan wings to her body. Gannon dies in an apparent freak accident, shortly after being warned of danger to his life by Dawson's unstable wife Marjorie (Cathryn Bradshaw). An elusive male prostitute named B. J. (Robert Sheehan) gives Dunford incriminating material gathered by Gannon about local officials. While investigating Gannon's death, Dunford believes he has found an ally in young Sgt. Bob Fraser (Steven Robertson).
Dunford visits Jeanette Garland's mother Paula (Rebecca Hall), whose husband had died by suicide due to their daughter's disappearance. This visit costs Dunford a beating from corrupt WYMP officers Tommy Douglas (Tony Mooney) and Bob Craven (Sean Harris), but Paula insists she had not alerted them.
Red Riding 1980
Director: James Marsh
Technique: 2-perf 35 mm film with an anamorphic aspect ratio of 2.35:1
Run time: 1 hour, 33 minutes
Rating: 1.99m
In 1980, following public outcry over the failure to catch the Yorkshire Ripper, a "squeaky clean" Manchester police detective, Assistant Chief Constable Peter Hunter (Paddy Considine), is assigned to travel to West Yorkshire to head the WYMP investigation, much to the chagrin of the former head, Bill Molloy. Hunter had previously worked on the Karachi Club massacre, a case he had to abandon due to his wife Joan's (Lesley Sharp) miscarriage. A member of Hunter's picked team is Helen Marshall (Maxine Peake), his former adulterous lover. The other member is Detective Chief Superintendent John Nolan (Tony Pitts), who knows the WYMP officers well. The two cases – massacre and serial killings – are linked by Bob Craven, who behaves in an openly hostile manner to the new team. Hunter correctly deduces that the Ripper inquiry is being side-tracked by the Wearside Jack tapes, and feels that the real Ripper has been interviewed and missed.
Hunter suspects that one of the Ripper's supposed victims, Clare Strachan, was not a Ripper victim. Given the different types of injuries she displayed, she had not been linked to the other victims until a letter was sent, allegedly by the Ripper, to Molloy and the press claiming responsibility for her murder. Hunter receives information from B. J., who is introduced through Reverend Martin Laws (Peter Mullan). B. J., who was Strachan's close friend, claims that she was a prostitute working for Eric Hall, a WYMP policeman (deceased). Hall's wife Elizabeth (Julia Ford) requests that Hunter meet her, and after visiting her house – where Laws is also present – she provides proof of Hall's work as a pimp and pornographer. She confirms that Hall was a suspect in the Strachan case until the letter turned up. She also mentions that he was convinced (and increasingly vocal) that Strachan was not a Ripper victim, and posits that he was killed as a result. She says she had given Hall's documents to Jobson, but the latter claims to have lost the files. Meanwhile, the former affair between Hunter and Marshall threatens to reignite.
Hunter interrogates Detective Inspectors Dick Alderman (Shaun Dooley) and Jim Prentice (Chris Walker). Alderman lets slip that the Strachan murder was probably committed by Hall, covered-up to look like a Ripper murder. Hunter also visits the now debilitated Tommy Douglas who later phones him demanding that they meet at his house. Hunter arrives to find Douglas and his daughter Karen (Charlotte James) killed. Hunter is seriously intimidated when he receives covertly taken photos of himself and Marshall in compromising positions. Their burgeoning affair is cut short when she reveals that she had fallen pregnant and Reverend Laws helped her have an abortion.
Red Riding 1983
Director: Anand Tucker
Technique: taped with a Red One digital camera
Run time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Rating: 2.05m
Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey) has spent years plagued by guilt over his reluctant participation in the corrupt activities within the WYMP, including a conspiracy protecting high-profile figures such as John Dawson.
It was Jobson who tipped off Dunford about the Roma camp arson, after participating in it under pressure by Molloy. The camp site was vacated to pursue Dawson's £100m shopping centre investment along with Jobson, Molloy, Angus, Alderman, Prentice, Douglas, Craven, and Nolan from Manchester. This investment, and the vice racket whose proceeds helped fund it, were discussed before the events of the first episode, during the marriage of Molloy's daughter to Bob Fraser.
Jobson also knew about the innocence of Michael Myshkin, who confessed to the child murders in 1974. Flashbacks show that a witness placed Reverend Laws near where Clare Kemplay's body was dumped. Laws was tortured until he mentioned Dawson, who promptly corroborated the priest's alibi; this, and the businessman's ominous fascination with swans, pointed to Dawson and Laws' guilt, but Molloy ordered Jobson to keep his suspicions to himself.
Jobson's pangs of conscience intensify in 1983 when a girl named Hazel Atkins (Tamsin Mitchell) disappears and he reopens the previous child murder cases. Angus allows Jobson to question Myshkin in gaol but orders Alderman to accompany him. Michael is unnerved and rendered incommunicative by Alderman's presence, suggesting that he was tortured in 1974.
Jobson starts a relationship with a medium, Mandy Wymer (Saskia Reeves), who knows important facts about the crimes. Angus dismisses Wymer's leads, reveals his knowledge of Jobson's tip to Dunford about the 1974 camp raid, angrily derides Jobson's scruples and orders him to retire quietly.
Cast
Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield), a young and ambitious reporter (and aspiring crime correspondent) for The Yorkshire Post and the main protagonist of the first episode. After a mostly unexplained stint "down south", he returns to his native Yorkshire following the death of his father (a reputable local tailor), whose funeral he misses to attend the Clare Kemplay disappearance press conference. During his father's wake, he first hears about the two earlier missing girls and decides to investigate.
Assistant Chief Constable Peter Hunter (Paddy Considine), protagonist of the second episode who is brought in from Manchester Police to West Yorkshire on two occasions, after the 1974 Karachi Club massacre, and to catch the Yorkshire Ripper in 1980. He is a non-practicing Catholic and a married man with no children.
Detective Superintendent Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey), nicknamed "the Owl" by his colleagues, a background character in the first two episodes and one of the protagonists of the third. Although a participant in most of the corruption in the WYMP, his lingering conscience and the high-functioning depression resulting from it drive most of the events in 1983. His wife left him and took their children sometime between 1974 and 1983; in later conversation CC Angus perceives Jobson as weak and ascribes his divorce, as well as his failure to secure promotions, to Jobson's obvious reluctance to abet the corruption.
John Piggott (Mark Addy), one of the protagonists of the third episode; a washed-out solicitor who grew up in Fitzwilliam next door to Mary Cole and Reverend Laws, and whose late father, Arthur "The Pig" Piggott, was an officer of the WYMP. He returns to Fitzwilliam due to his mother's funeral, and is approached separately by Mrs Cole and Mrs Myshkin to represent their respective sons. A flashback reveals that his father died in his home in a violent incident (either murder or suicide) that is left mostly unexplained to the audience.
John Dawson (Sean Bean), a businessman who has built a deep web of corruption involving local politicians and the WYMP, and the first episode's main antagonist. He has enough money and clout to use WYMP officers as thugs, arsonists and hitmen. He is also a sadistic paedophile, implied to have participated in the torture and death of at least one of the missing girls (Clare Kemplay). He is implicitly referred to as "The Swan" in Mandy Wymer's séances, probably because of his fascination with the animal.
Filming and production
On 8 and 10 September 2008 the cast and crew were spotted filming at the Connaught Rooms on Manningham Lane, and a Victorian house on the corner of Selbourne Mount and North Park Road, just across the road from Cartwright Hall in Lister Park, Manningham, Bradford, West Yorkshire, which was also used. On 5 October Sean Bean, Paddy Considine, Jim Carter, Warren Clarke, Chris Walker, Sean Harris and James Weaver were spotted filming at the Connaught Rooms again, which was used multiple more times in the following weeks. The cast and crew were later spotted filming in Little Germany, Bradford. Filming also took place at the former Presbyterian Church on 1 Simes Street, Bradford, which was being used as the Koh-I-Noor Indian restaurant at the time, was used as The Karachi Club in the trilogy. The former Bradford Central Police Station on The Tyrls in Bradford city centre, which has since been demolished and built over with Bradford City Park, was also used.
Other locations included Seacroft Hospital and Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, West Yorkshire. The Brudenell was also used as The Karachi Club in the trilogy. HM Prison Leeds, Cookridge Hospital, and The Yorkshire Post's Wellington Street building which was demolished in 2014, in Leeds were also used.
Filming also took place at Arden Road Social Club in Halifax, West Yorkshire, the National Coal Mining Museum for England in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.
Historical basis
The television trailers for all three Red Riding episodes bore the tagline "Based on True Events". Nevertheless, none of the characters, nor the murder victims, bear the names of real people (with the possible exception of Peter Sutcliffe) and only a few have obvious real-life models.
The wrongful prosecution and imprisonment of the character Michael Myshkin is a clear parallel to the real-life case of Stefan Kiszko, falsely accused of and convicted for the killing of 11-year-old Lesley Molseed in 1975. He was later proved innocent.
The mission and subsequent official vilification of Assistant Chief Constable Peter Hunter in Red Riding 1980 are strongly reminiscent of the case of John Stalker, a real life Deputy Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police who headed an investigation into the shooting of suspected members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1982.
Awards and nominations
The films won The TV Dagger at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards. At the 2010 British Academy Television Awards, the series was nominated for Best Drama Serial while Rebecca Hall won Best Supporting Actress.
Theatrical film adaptation
Columbia Pictures acquired the rights to adapt the novels and films into a theatrical film. The studio was negotiating with Ridley Scott in October 2009 to direct.
The trilogy was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States by IFC Films on 5 February 2010.
Overseas broadcasting
The series has been aired by Danish public broadcaster DR1 on two occasions under the title Pigen med den røde hætte (The Girl with the Red Cap). It has also been aired by SVT in Sweden, by Rai 4 in Italy, by ARD in Germany, and by SBS in Australia.