i've spent the last week and a half maybe two weeks binge watching all 48 episodes of crimes
that shook britain and my biggest takeaway is that i'm absolutely devastated that there hasn't been a
new series since 2007. i am completely addicted to this and there are two main reasons for that
maybe three reasons the first one is that it's british there are so many amazing american crime
series but there are not that many comparatively that are based on british crimes or ones that are
quite as extensive as crimes that shook britain so it was amazing to get stuck into 48 episodes
each episodes between kind of 45 and 55 minutes so let's say rounding up to 48 hours of british crime
completely immersive and absolutely loved it the second reason i thoroughly enjoyed this is
i think they're actually very well presented each episode is a little mini documentary in its own
and the stories are told very effectively i'll talk more about that in a moment
and the third reason i love it is that it taught me quite a lot there were a lot of things in this
despite the fact that i eat sleep and breathe true crime and crime fiction i am a crime fiction
writer there are still things that i could learn from this and there were some stories that were
that i hadn't heard of that were very very shocking
and honestly they chilled me they thrilled me but they chilled me so i will further
down this discussion i will mention some specific episodes in fact i'll probably name every episode
to give you an overview of the kind of content that you can expect but i won't do that until
near the end so i don't spoil anything if you want to go in like i did with no expectations for what
exactly to expect i will say however that the majority of these are about murders some of them
are mass murders some of them are serial killers some is just one brutal murder of an individual
occasionally a child um there is one maybe more than one where it didn't end in murder there's
definitely at least one and obviously my favorite true crime stories are those about murders
and that sounds disgusting and sick and twisted but you know they're the ones that are the most
fascinating as humans we find that fascinating and that's definitely what's presented here
so the method in which they're presented is is pretty traditional approach to documentaries
we have interviews with people who are affected so for the most part these are relatives friends
colleagues obviously the people who are deceased cannot say anything and we have where available we
have cctv footage um either of the days leading up to it or of the crime itself where possible
it's done tastefully it's not it's not the most graphic documentary that i've seen
it's it doesn't sugarcoat things but if you're squeamish i think for the most part you'd be okay
it doesn't really go into kind of too much graphic detail which is a bit of a shame in some ways um
and there there are some reconstructions and it's all kind of nicely woven together
some of the later seasons series i'm see i'm so used to talking about american
true crime series that it's seasons series are actually presented by derma monahan rather than
just being narrated and i kind of don't like that because i feel like it's a waste of visual like
instead of seeing him visually for a couple of seconds every 10 minutes or so i'd rather those
seconds were used as a voiceover on an image that's more shocking or effective but it's a minor
complaint did not really detract from anything that i liked about this so i'm going to also i
should point out it's narrated by tom roberts um and mourinho presented it from i think six onwards
and i'm going to quickly whiz through a couple of the episodes that really stood out for me to
kind of give you an overview of the kind of things that you'll face oh something fell off the table
also i really just want to talk about these because i'm ridiculously excited so these are
well i find it quite weird actually because when i was watching them i was watching them
on amazon prime and it's actually in a slightly different order and not all of the episodes are
exactly the same there are a couple that are not listed here on wikipedia but a couple that
are on here that weren't there so i'm not exactly sure what's going on it was originally broadcast
there are other versions of it but for the most part this is um what we see is what we get
so there's there's the hungerford massacre where michael ryan shot dead 16 people
and went on this rampage absolutely terrifying stuff there's a section there's one on harold
shipman which is very very interesting obviously it looks at the murder of young sarah payne
the london nail bombings i hadn't heard of them and that was terrifying and
really really shocked me that one really looked at the dunblane massacre that episode was amazing
because like every british person i'm aware of the dumpling massacre i didn't know the
specifics i had no idea that hamilton was that old i thought he was like much younger
very very disturbing stuff and there's one of the murder of rhys jones
which is a young 11 year old boy died for no reason literally no reason and it's painful
the murder of victoria columbia is quite terrifying um i don't want to talk about
any of these in too much detail because i want you to watch them and enjoy it but columbia
i'll talk about briefly basically she moved from the ivory coast to england with an aunt
who pretended to take her over to send her to a good school she was actually supposed
to be going to france but she came over here and her aunt abused her um
severely and it's such an emotional episode uh looks at jaime bulger um
raul moat of course valmott was i think realm was probably one of the more recent ones here
most of them yorkshire ripper of course a lot of them are
much older um jimmy savile lee rigby fred and rose west uh the philpotts
the martian s disaster um which is the boat on the thames that cup sized um ralph harris
angus sinclair that one edinburgh really i've read a lot about that one and it was
it was great the way the documentary presented it but it always irritates me that case so much um
peter tobin very famous case the manchester arena bombings that's
probably the most recent one actually um steppen hill hospital murders
and quite a few more so yes it's a mixed bag and that's what i love
is that every episode felt different they were all done with respect and
they were all done with balance as far as possible once somebody's being convicted it's kind of
you have a side and you take it but they were done with balance for the most part
and i absolutely love this documentary so if i can have one thing in my life
it's that we get another series of this okay there are more things i want in my life but
i would love another series of crimes that shook britain because it's absolutely amazing
i love it apparently according to wikipedia it was rebroadcast between 2014 and 2019 in
a completely random order on channel 5 under the title britain's worst crimes so when you if you do
go on to crime and investigation on amazon which i strongly suggest you do if you're interested
into true crime which if you're listening eight minutes into this video i assume you are then
just bear in mind that the episodes are not necessarily the order that they say they are
but i do thoroughly recommend it's one of the best series i've ever seen and i desperately need more