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.

STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Awful

On the 10th April 1955, Ruth Ellis (Lucy Boynton) fatally shot her former lover, racing car driver David Blakely (Laurie Davidson.) She freely admitted her crime, and seemed resigned to her punishment. Her lawyer, John Bickford (Toby Jones) desperately tried to get her to work the system, and evidence emerged of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Blakely. There was also the involvement of her partner on the side, Desmond Cusson (Mark Stanley), who may have supplied her with the gun, but it all emerged to naught, and she became the last woman to be hanged in the UK on 13th July 1955.

The story of Ruth Ellis has been well documented, but on the seventieth anniversary of her crime and subsequent conviction and execution, ITV have delivered this four part dramatisation of her grim fate. It seems relevant on this anniversary, given how much more is understood about abusive relationships, and how power and control can exert their influence over actions, and as such, Ellis's case spearheaded public movement towards abolishing capital punishment.

Despite the case being well captured in the public domain, a TV drama still had the potential to deliver something worthwhile, but A Cruel Love fails to develop into anything with much depth and substance in regards the story. It unwisely plays in a reverse plotting style, beginning with Ruth's arrest, and then backtracking to her relationship with Blakely and Cusson. It's a shame, as the performances are decent, namely Boynton in the lead role, capturing Ruth's stubbornly determined acceptance of her actions, before the gravity of her fate dawns on her, with strong support from Jones as the lawyer who desperately tries to save her, but understands that the system is determined to crush her for being a free and independent young woman. Stanley is impassioned and intense as the man she loved on the side, while Nigel Havers makes a grimly pertinent appearance as the judge who sentences Ruth to death, given it was his grandfather who actually did the deed.

It plays out as it does, in its disjointed and clunky manner, but the tale still keeps your attention over its four part course, before drawing to its desperately sad conclusion. A story still worth telling, but it doesn't completely hit the mark here. ***

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.

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.