“Humankind cannot bear very much reality,” said TS Eliot, but then he never had Netflix. In fact, it would appear that humankind cannot get enough of the stuff, at least in terms of TV drama. Not reality in the Big Brother sense – and when was that ever any reflection of reality anyway? – but in terms of the dramatisation of real-life crimes.

Almost every real-life case, from the most infamous to ones that barely troubled the court reporters, has been turned into a TV show, all beginning with some version of the caption, “the following is based on a true story.” Des… A Confession… The Moorside… In Plain Sight… The Serpent… Honour… Manhunt (Parts 1 and 2)… Little Boy Blue… White House Farm… And that’s just in the UK. The Americans are merrily riding the same televisual train, with The Assassination of Gianni Versace, The People vs OJ Simpson, Unbelievable, Dr Death and so on.

It has got to the point where the best way for a struggling writer to get a drama commissioned would be to bump someone off in the most ghoulish fashion, string the police along for a few years and then write the dramatic adaptation themselves.

Reading down that list you’ll have noticed that this is not a problem of quality. The predominance of true crime drama has yielded some of the finest shows of the past few years, with Three Girls winning the 2018 Bafta Best Drama and A Confession and The Moorside both nominated (The People vs OJ Simpson won five Emmys). 

Writers love it because it is fertile ground, full of extremes of behaviour but with an inbuilt framework from which they can extrapolate and ponder, brass-rubbing for truth and humanity where there appears to be none. Actors love it too, because playing an infamous psychopath, adding some deep-seated “why” to the notorious “what” in a shattering performance, is a surefire way to win a gong.