George Kay’s seven-part series reconstructs the 1975-81 manhunt for Peter Sutcliffe, tracing every missed alibi, ignored survivor and misfiled report that let the killer slip through South Yorkshire’s overstated dragnet. Toby Jones’s DCS Dennis Hoban and David Morrissey’s ACC George Oldfield embody an investigation crippled by tunnel vision, while Daniel Mays and Katherine Kelly play Sydney and Emily Jackson, the taxi-driver couple whose brutalised marriage collapses under the weight of police suspicion. Kay keeps the camera on procedure, not psychopath: episode four ends with officers still convinced the murderer sends taped letters, even as Sutcliffe is questioned and released yards away.
Shot across Leeds, Dewsbury and Wortley in summer 2022, the drama was produced by New Pictures for ITVX and directed by Lewis Arnold, using Michael Bilton’s book Wicked Beyond Belief as spine and 200,000 pages of archive material as flesh. Lee Ingleby’s quietly furious Jim Hobson carries the later episodes, watching senior ranks double-down on hoax theories while female officers, including Chloe Harris’s WPC Jenny Bush, are sidelined from front-line inquiry. The score by Sarah Warne withholds crescendo until the final frame, when Oldfield’s replacement quietly files the 1981 charges that close the biggest investigation in British criminal history.
Production Details
ITV1 / 1 Season / 7 Episodes / 2023
Created by: George Kay
Showrunner(s): Lewis Arnold, Willow Grylls, George Kay
Writer(s): George Kay
Producer(s): Sarah Lewis, Matt Sandford
Cinematography: Ed Rutherford
Music: Sarah Warne
Main Cast
Michael McElhatton as CC Ronald Gregory
Jack Deam as DI Les Hanley
Lee Ingleby as DCS Jim Hobson
Kris Hitchen as DC John Nunn
Chloe Harris as WPC Jenny Bush
David Morrissey as ACC George Oldfield
Steven Waddington as Dick Holland
John Henshaw as Mike Dugdale
Toby Jones as DCS Dennis Hoban
Stephen Tompkinson as David Gee
Jasmine Lee-Jones as Marcella Claxton
Christopher Hatherall as DCS John Domaille
