Phew! Am I ever glad I got out of that environment! Here I am sitting in Vancouver some 55 years after growing up in a council estate. An Estate that started off being a beautiful new village and then descended into a drug filled, violent, holding cell. Just like the ones portrayed in this series.Liverpool's always been a place where you have to know your boundaries, you don't venture into certain areas because of their reputations. If you don't go there then you''ll be OK, but the trouble is that the residents of some of the estates are roving marauders and you can be the innocent victim if you're in their pathway.This series portrays it brilliantly with all of the zeitgeist of Merseyside percolating throughout the story. I have to say that it doesn't seem to have changed that much since I left, middle class people are still wonderfully polite, most of the Estate denizens are warm and natural and the yobboes are just as ugly and nasty as I remember them.That antisocial streak in the underclass has been developed over years and years of unemployment, hand to mouth existence, hopeless futures and a hatred of the privileged classes. With this sort of framework things go wrong , as they did in this case, but the story is told in a way that highlights the huge chasm between the poor on the Estates and the rest of normal society. The absolute disdain for any form of authority is born out of a situation that says "How are you going to punish me any more than the punishment I get from living here already?" "I don't care what you do to me!"You'd be hard pressed to separate the professional actors from the locals who were recruited for the series, it is so very well done by everyone involved. You'll also be hard pressed not to get through this without openly crying at some of the heart wrenching scenes.Truly a great production

The shaky cam was so bad my head was spinning and I had to give up less than 7 minutes in. I'm sure I would have been gripped by the story and drama unfolding, and that it was an accurate telling of a senseless crime, but I didn't get the chance to be able to judge that. Why directors insist on using hand held cameras that induce nausea when watching is beyond me.

Few people in the United Kingdom will not have heard of the murder of Rhys Jones, an eleven-year-old boy from a middle-class family in Liverpool killed unintentionally by 16-year-old Sean Mercer, a low- level drug dealer who fired a revolver at two rival gang members over a postcode. It was the innocence of Rhys, a promising child with aspirations of playing for Everton Football Club that brought the attention of the national media on the case. The police were under tremendous pressure to bring the killer and those who supplied the gun to justice while the gang did their best to intimidate potential witnesses and pass off the murder onto a completely innocent party. This superb four-part drama, written by Jeff Pope tells the story of how those involved in both the murder and the concealing of the evidence were eventually brought to trial and the impact that Rhys death had on his parents, the investigating officers, and the local community. Bring the remorseless murderer to trial proved a complex issue, with two innocent families court in the middle of the lies of his alibi. The drama follows three narrative strands - The witness who was forced to hide the gun (an excellent performance from relative newcomer Michael Moran) and the family whose fragile son (An appropriately vulnerable performance from Nathan Clark-Smith) Rhys Parents (Sinead Keenan in her best ever performance as the Mum and Brian F O'Bryne finally getting the sort of meaty role he deserves) and the police investigation team led by Detective Dave Kelly (Stephen Graham whose versatility continues to expand with every performance) and DCI Mark Guinness (The always superb Stephen Walters in a very grounded role)Through these three narratives, we see the extreme pressures everyone was under both to stay in a wall of silence or break the case and bring the killers of Rhys to justice. One of the reasons this drama works so well is because of the generous four episodes, which gives adequate screen time to convey the truthfulness of each characters journey and the actor's performances which makes for a stronger production. It is good to see ITV drama giving this sort of material the running time that it so richly deserves. All the cast here doing a fantastic job including those portraying murderer Mercer his accomplices but the real stand out performance for me was that of the conflicted Kevin Moody (Portrayed by Michael Moran) the one witness the police depended on in order to conflict the intimidating Mercer.I read somewhere that the senior policewoman stated having watched this production that she was displeased with her portrayal in the show. I find it hard to believe that these scenes were in anyway fictional, knowing the pressure they were under to get a result in this case and how the upper echelons of the police always behave in such circumstances. To its credit LLB did not end with the conviction of those involved followed by a brief summary. A good number of scenes were shown after the case, covering the impact on the marriage of the parents and the other lives affected by the actions of Mercer. It is incredulous that the killer and his accomplices (Most of whom are now out of prison) had no remorse for the killing of Rhys whatsoever and it is this vagrant display of complete lack of empathy for causing the loss of life which makes this show have such wider viewing implications beyond the case it deals with. As Mrs Rhys says at one point 'Our Rhys was not in the wrong place at the wrong time, Sean Mercer was when he fired that gun' Essential and compelling viewing and an outstanding credit for everyone who worked on the production.

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning In August 2007, in the car park of The Fir Tree pub in Croxteth, Liverpool, eleven year old Rhys Jones, who was on his way home from football practice, became the most innocent of casualties in a local gang rivalry, dying after being accidentally shot by a bullet meant for someone else. On the eve of promotion, Detective Superintendent Dave Kelly (Stephen Graham) is assigned to lead the investigation into Rhys's death that comes to have a far more profound effect on his professional and home life than he could have imagined. Despite his dogged determination to get justice for Rhys and his parents Mel (Sinead Keenan) and Steve (Brian F.O' Byrne), Kelly encounters a wall of silence from a local community living in fear of the gangs and the repercussions of being labelled a 'grass.' Ten years on from the case that this TV drama is based on, ITV have chosen to make it into a three part drama detailing the case and how events panned out. There's certainly a lot of meat on the bones to work with, and the film is careful not to sensationalise anything, and tell the case in a sensitive and effecting way. Aside from the already horrifying death of a child, the case grabbed the nations attention also by highlighting what may well be a commonplace truth around the country, of normal, decent, respectable people living alongside those who live by their own rules with no intention of living honestly, and the shocking consequences of what happens when these two worlds sometimes inevitably collide.Although he feels a little too much like the 'go to' guy for this part, it can also be said that there was no better person for the lead role than Graham, with his natural Scouse background and pretty realistic physical resemblance to the real Dave Kelly. He fits the part pretty effortlessly, but still turns in a reliably great performance, as an increasingly seasoned detective who feels personally affronted by the crime he is investigating, unable to let it go due to the sheer outrageousness and senselessness of it, young men whose need to belong and be part of armies who are willing to endanger and take life for something as stupid as an area code. He is complimented by Keenan and O'Byrne as Rhy's grieving parents, O'Byrne bringing a quiet, bottled up angst as the father, with Keenan an emotional torrent as the mother.During the film, Mel takes exception to Rhys being described as being 'in the wrong place at the wrong time.' It's a commonly thrown around soundbite, that is rather unintentionally thoughtless in its use. A very lawful world and a very uncivilised world do coexist by each other very unknowingly, and that world can sometimes reach up and bite with the most tragic of results. But it should always be that world that never has any place or any time, rather than the decent one. ****