Murder is a BAFTA award-winning drama series co-created by Robert Jones and Kath Mattock, and written by Robert Jones. The series of standalone films was made by Touchpaper TV and produced by Kath Mattock for BBC 2.
The final episode, Murder: The Big Bang, is directed by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard. It uses personal confessions to revisit the missing moments leading up to a death, in search of the truth. Intercut with CCTV footage, live action and forensic evidence, the protagonists speak direct to camera giving their version of events.
Story synopsis: Ten years ago, an off-duty policeman was killed in cold blood in a swimming-pool car park. That much is not in dispute. What has never been ascertained is precisely which one of the three armed robbers serving life for PC Prescott’s murder actually pulled the trigger.
Seven at the time, Jess (Jessica Barden) witnessed the crime and has been tormented by this and numerous other gaps in the official account. She’s still angry now and it’s an emotion that has got her in trouble over the years.
Jess is on the final day of a sentence in a youth offender institution herself. She’s been talking with a therapist there in an attempt to resolve her issues. The therapist has promised to contact the convicted trio and ask them to consider providing Jess with the precious gift of truth. Jess is hoping against hope that she’ll find out before she leaves the institution in the morning.
The killers, brothers Whitmore (Michael Smiley) and Clyde Harris (David Wilmot), and their accomplice Curtis Kodro (Johann Myers), each give their accounts of what happened on that fateful day. Contradictory, self-serving or warped by the passage of time, the accounts clash as often as they overlap.
Time hangs heavy on all three, as it has done for the past ten years, but slowly the sense that this night is a night of change gathers pace. Can all four find a new beginning by confronting head-on what actually took place all those years ago? Or will that terrible event demand one more life before its power can be dissipated?
