Steeltown Murders

DC Paul Bethel is part of a team investigating the murder of two young women, he tries to link a third woman, but his superiors block him, years later, with the advent of DNA testing, DCI Paul Bethel is given a lead.

This is a fantastic four part series from The BBC, being from the area myself I can confirm that this case did indeed cast a big shadow over the whole area.

I am a massive fan of writer Ed Whitmore, he has written some great dramas over the years, including the excellent Manhunt series, once again he gets the balance of fact and entertainment spot on.

Of course there are some dramatic changes, new characters etc, but the heart of the story is very much still here.

Production values are spot on, it looks fantastic, the music, sets, clothes and cars are all on point. There is one scene where my old haunt, The Top Rank on The Kingsway is recreated, again they got it spot on.

A super cast, Aneurin Barnard, Keith Allen and many others, Philip Glenister steals the show with a superb performance as Paul Bethel, at times it feels like we've got a real life Gene Hunt, less The Quattro.

9/10.

I agree with everything Geordie 101 said. It started quite slowly and in a slightly confusing manner, but that's good. It makes the viewer sit up and pay attention. Really good performances from everyone especially Glenister and the actor who played his younger character. It was marvellous to see 'Coaches' from Gavin and Stacey play such a prominent part and the chemistry between him and Glenister was palpable. I was a young woman working with the police in the 70s and their portrayal of the CID officers in particular was spot on. This is a dramatisation of real events where people really were murdered. I think the tone was perfect. I've just read a review by the The Telegraph where is was described as 4hrs of turgid viewing. Ignore that. Watch it. It's a tremendous piece of drama retelling true life events.

An excellent production. Truly captures the essence of the eras portrayed and most importantly put the eras into contextz a seemingly overlooked aspect recenty. I really enjoyed this and thought that the program was excellently cast. The filming tone is superb. A very good insight into not only the Police but also the early use of DNA. Well done to all involved. The whole series had a good pace to it and shows the stress that these kind of events can have on not only the victims family but everyone associated with the incident and this is graphically shown here, better than any other program I can recall.

The Steeltown Murders is four-part drama based on real life events that took part in 1973 and 2002 beginning with the series of murders that occurred in the South Wales area. Generally, the TV drama has some time travelling features about that frequently takes us back to the beginning of the basic side of the somewhat painstaking and exhaustive investigation of the murders and then forward to DNA developments to identify the suspect. For those whom are unfamiliar with this case, it might be hard to follow at times as it frequently time travels back and forth but nevertheless it's very gripping, bleak and gritty.

A very confusing beginning. Where music is often used to establish a time frame for a drama, the two songs used at the beginning of this one were from 1970. So I thought it was 1970, but then there was one from 1973. The latter being the correct one chronologically to map on to the events that unfolded.

But hang on, this was a flashback, so what year was the new investigative work taking place. It took a while, but I think it was 2003.

So, the start of the drama was very muddled, especially character wise.

Overall I thought it was one episode too long. The third part particularly dragged and the final couple of episodes could have been condensed into one.

Premise: Twenty-first century technological advances help detectives with a cold murder case from 1973.

Geraldine Hughes and Pauline Floyd both left the Top Rank nightclub in Swansea without ever making it home.

Their bodies were discovered later in Llandarcy. Dubbed the case of the "Saturday Night Strangler", it became the first documented case of a serial killer in Wales.

If it hadn't been for the fact it was based on real events it would have seem cliched; young detective should be seen and not heard and not have anything to offer the operation being run by superiors who are seriously flawed policing wise.

A strong cast, particularly Philip Glenister, made this watchable.