Are there crimes that are too depraved to be dramatised? And how long should programme makers wait before real life crime becomes the subject of a TV show?
If the case of the Night Stalker – a serial burglar and rapist who terrorised south east London for 17 years during the 1990s and 2000s – is worthy of being turned into television, then doing so now is surely too soon.
Hundreds of elderly woman and men – the youngest, 68; the eldest in her nineties – fell prey to the Night Stalker. Men and women, sleeping in their beds, woken by a gloved hand, a masked face.
A decade after Delroy Grant, the man responsible, was brought to justice, ITV is broadcasting Manhunt: The Night Stalker. The four-part drama, which finishes tonight (Thursday), opens with a scene which makes you wonder whether depicting such fresh events for entertainment is really a good idea; the bloodied bedsheets of one victim shows what those who found Grant in their bedrooms suffered.
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