James Walton

Whodunnit that disappears down a rabbit-hole: ITV1’s The Playboy Bunny Murder reviewed

Plus: a BBC4 doc that took us back to the far-off days when influencers were clever men in specs who revered Shakespeare and Wagner

Bunny girl Eve Stratford (second from right) pictured with Eric Morecambe (c.1974). Image: Future Studios  
issue 18 November 2023

Perhaps unfairly, Marcel Theroux does rather bring to mind Dannii Minogue. Not only does he look very similar to his more famous sibling, but when not writing (pretty good) novels, he’s in the same line of work: like Louis, he makes TV documentaries that feature much brow-furrowing.

His latest was a neat fit for ITV1’s continuing obsession with true crime. As it transpired, The Playboy Bunny Murder was an over-simple title for an extremely tangled tale. Nonetheless, the programme did start with the killing of bunny girl Eve Stratford who, in March 1975, had her throat cut at her Leyton home. In those pre-DNA testing days, the police did what they could – which is to say they arrested and soon released Eve’s musician boyfriend, and then hoped for something to turn up.

‘I’ve never been able to regard paperbacks as real books’

For the next four years, not much did. But in 1979, Lynda Farrow – a croupier at another West End club – was murdered in her home in the same way.

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