A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story

I have always liked Lucy Boynton & to be fair she is perhaps a little too pretty to play Ruth Ellis, who was not very attractive. However, with the superb make up & her terrific acting skills she pulls off the role effortlessly. There have been a fair few biopics on Ruth Ellis as her story is a fascinating one. My favourite so far is Miranda Richardson in Dance with a Stranger, but Miss Boyntons portrayal is very close to being just as great. She shows her dedication to her craft which is admirable. For instance she is a non smoker, yet here & in other roles she is shown smoking (although not properly) which fits the character. Other things I enjoyed about this production was the 1950's sets which are superbly done, yet occasionally it is let down by slow screen play & a rather bland script, making parts of this difficult to watch. Also as normal with productions today there is a fair bit of emphasis on the theme of feminism which is not really a problem, only for the fact Ruth Ellis was not a feminist. She admitted her guilt & was certainly not a victim. This does come across in the excellent court room scenes, which I also enjoyed.

All in all this is a good drama, with excellent acting from Lucy Boynton, but I am only giving this a 6 as I feel it was let down by a weak script & occasionally dragging screen play. As well as glaring gaps in the Ellis story in which her son is almost invisible. This was a missed opportunity to show Ellis as a mother which would have perhaps garnered more sympathy for her character. So to enjoy this you should also have an appreciation & understanding of the real Ruth Ellis story. Ruth made her mark on history with a violent crime of passion which resulted in her execution as the very last women to be hanged in Britain.

Lucy Boynton deserves more than a rating of 7 for her brave portrayal of Ruth Ellis, but "A Cruel Love" suffers from a shallow screenplay by Kelly Jones. The same few facts are told over and over: that she loved David Blakely (Laurie Davidson) to a fault, that she holds herself guilty and responsible for his murder. We learn little about Ruth's early life, or her marriage, and her children are reduced to props. She got solid help from the actors Toby Stephens and Toby Jones, though why Jones chose to whisper every single line of dialog was beyond me. As for Mark Stanley playing Desmond Cusson, the man devoted to her, he barely makes an impression.

The production design by Stephen Campbell is particularly commendable for its bold, dark colors and period sets. I didn't understand how Ruth could afford the array of dresses in her wardrobe, given that she wasn't even able to afford rent, but I took it for eye candy. The series could easily have been three episodes instead of four, except for one thing: when Boynton is on the screen, all you want is more.

My father a WW2 veteran, he volunteered from Jamaica to serve in the RAF aged 18. After he was demobbed he returned to the UK in 1947. He was here when a great number of the notorious capital cases were tried & gross miscarriages of justice took place. I asked him about Ruth Ellis when an earlier series was made, he said that whilst she did not help herself by appearing more sympathetic, she should not have been hanged. He told me that he was vehemently against capital punishment. I watched the series and I could not fail to be moved by her situation especially knowing the effect that her execution had on her family as it cast a long shadow. Truly shocking & I am glad that capital punishment has been eradicated from the UK justice system.

Ruth Ellis This is story that is both fascinating and heart breaking that I was looking forward to. There is place for a discussion about the need for the ultimate justice to be delivered whilst also not shying away from its mistakes. Or as in the case whether like France there should be a place for a "crime of passion" is crime passionnel. It refers to a violent crime, such as murder, that is committed due to a strong impulse, like anger or jealousy.

But this film sadly is not it. First of all this is just too serious a topic for us to be distracted by "the message", its imposition here is inappropriate. My first impression however is to be frustrated by the poor set design and dialogue. What was the weird railway like carriage that was I think meant to be a café? If anyone wants to know they looked like then watch "Vera Drake" or "The Krays" or "Look Back in Anger". The sets are just jarringly inauthentic.

When she calls someone "pompous" I laughed out loud. Who wrote the dialogue I wondered. Then I saw Kelly Jones wrote the dialogue and she is posh from Oxford. Fair enough. But what about those accents? They sound like Dick Van Dyke, the casting is wrong.

Lastly ALL the men are bad. Horrible, nasty. Come on now this trope is just such a bore.

Ruth Ellis ironically gained a sort of immortality in British criminal history right at the moment of her death as she was the last woman to be executed, unless the death penalty is ever reinstated, which I personally hope it isn't. Her sorry story has been told before on the small and big screen but here we are again, almost exactly 70 years on, for this 4-part ITV series starring Lucy Boynton in the title role.

It starts explosively as we witness Ellis cold-bloodedly murder her lover David Blakely by shooting him on a public street in front of witnesses. To that extent it's an open-and-shut case but as we're inevitably flashed back to how we've got to this point, the question of diminished responsibility through provocation emerges, which, if accepted by a jury, might reduce her sentence and so spare her life. This aspect of the narrative is what connects it to the present day, that of course, and the afore mentioned argument against capital punishment. However, as history tells us, neither the diminished responsibility defence or the abolition of the rope were passed into law until years later, although the point is made that this case.may well have assisted in hastening both law changes.

This was a high-end production, featuring an excellent central performance by Boynton torn between her two heartless lovers played by Laurie Davidson and Mark Stanley. The strong casting continues with other familiar faces such as the ubiquitous, super-reliable Toby Jones as Ellis's unyielding first defence solicitor, Arthur Darvill as her last-chance counsel and, as the sympathetic prison governor, Juliet Stevenson. Yes, that final piece of casting tells you diversity supercedes authenticity which you see reflected in other places too, but nevertheless, cleverly, atmospherically and at the end, sympathetically directed, this was a compelling and impactful mini-series well worth watching.