Over two consecutive nights, we pieced together the strange and terrifying case of Raoul Moat. Now we reached the finale, and I have to say it confirmed everything I previously thought about adaptations of true crime.
This final episode felt incredibly rushed.
CIO Neil Adamson was feeling the pressure, and this is a staple of many true crime adaptations – the focus falls on the lead investigative officer and the race against time they face as they battle to bring in a perpetrator. In this case, Raoul Moat was becoming more and more like a folk hero to many, with many in the area (and the country) conveniently forgotten that he had murdered one, critically injured another and blinded one more person. The drama used the mother and sister of murdered Chris Shaw as almost cyphers to explore this shocking attitude adopted by much of the public.
But of course, as the minutes ticked by, the inevitable end game for Moat – who, it had been established, came from a broken, abusive home and had deep-seated mental health problems – loomed into view. And there’s no denying that there were tense scenes as the police finally cornered their man. They were desperate for him not to take his own life, as he sat alone by the river bank, shotgun in hand (the decision was mercifully taken to spare us the Paul Gascoigne scene).
And yet this scene, which could have really explored Moat’s psyche, only lasted five minutes or so. I wanted more of this, more of the tension and more of the back and forth between the doomed Moat and Adamson and his team.
This was symptomatic of the whole series, I felt. Usually in true crime adaptations, writers are keen to zero in on a particular angle to the case in order to tell a human story behind the murder case. Here we got a bit of everything – a comment about domestic violence, the tortured detective trope, a study of how the police screwed up in the case, public attitudes to killers who give the police the run around, and also comments on the media and how they report sensitive cases.
Despite the fine performances – Lee Ingleby and Sally Mesham in particular – The Hunt For Raoul Moat felt like it tried to fit in too much stuff from what was a tricky, but very strange, case.
Paul Hirons
The Hunt For Raoul Moat is shown on ITV and ITVX in the UK
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