The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story

Not only do you look into the case of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the Uk, but also into her family and the chance of a conspiracy theory, very interesting!

This documentary provides an excellent analysis of the evidence and raises serious questions about the police and legal procedures in the 1950s. However, it is undermined by numerous film clips, most of a whimsical nature, that are inserted throughout the programmes. Those depicting court scenes could be said to aid a viewer's understanding of how a courtroom would have looked, but the ridiculous clips from US and other movies were out of place and, for me, spoiled the documentary.

An exceptional documentary driven at a fast consistent pace which nevertheless was thorough, probing and with prime interviewees. Even the novel short illustrative clips from various B&W crime films blended seamlessly. It managed to respect the subject, grieve for the injustice to Ruth Ellis yet be entertaining

The only criticism was the the film-makers imposition of a mistaken notion of '50s British morality as 19th C and Ruth Ellis as a "modern woman"..For obvious reasons men in general had a less judgemental view of night-club hostesses..It was wives who for understandable valid reasons saw such women (available willing and sexually skilled) as a real threat to marriages.(As happened in India when young English women went there as wives and promptly ended the previous regime of racial boundary-free relationships) However equally the murder was a crime of passion - Ruth Ellis shot the man who done her wrong and many women felt sympathetic.to her.

Apart from this it is an exceptional documentary which did justice to the story in a way neither earlier documentaries or the film had done. A rare thing - a documentary worth repeated viewings.

The Ruth Ellis story has and always will be interesting and this documentary is not different. However watching this documentary, its clear that Gillian Pachter had already made up her mind that Desmond Cussen's was involved in the murder which i found very irritating as she made wild assumptions that could not be proved and therefore pointless. The fact is that Ellis was tried under the rules and regulations of 1955 Britain, many of the things done then - Police Investigations, Diminished Responsibility, etc, etc ,etc have been subsequently researched and improved upon. While the documentary is good at hi-lighting that Ellis would have probably not hanged, if the trial had occurred a few years later, i am sure that same logic could be applied to hundreds of other hangings throughout time. As i said earlier, my only complaint was Pachter, who obviously had decided she wanted to directly link Cussens to the case and perhaps make a exclusive discovery, ignored facts and went leaping to other possible assumptions even when the experts shes was asking told her otherwise.

To be honest, at three episodes it was two episodes too long.

The way it was being presented one expected some new revelations being uncovered, but there were not any.

There was a lot of going over the same ground and constant references to the law, as it stood, in 1955. That being the case it is no use saying that if tried in present day things would have been different, because that is obvious. There is no death penalty so Ruth Ellis would not have been executed.

At the end I was left to think that as the law stood in 1955 there was no alternative to the death sentence because Ruth Ellis admitted the crime and refused to offer any mitigating circumstances.

In the first episode heavy emphasis was put on the fact that Ellis's son, Andre, although only 10 years old, was never questioned. Also, his grandparent's were alleged to have told him not to say anything if questioned. I big "why" was made much of but no further reference was made, but it became obvious that Andre's evidence would have served the prosecution rather than the defence in that he witnessed Ellis practicing firing a gun.

With a drama on ITV (A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story) as well as a supporting documentary (A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story), this one was one too many.

The ITV documentary covered the same ground, highlighted some extras and was more concise encompassed within a single episode.