True serial killers are mercifully rare. But Reginald Christie strangled six women for no good motive, and an innocent man, Timonthy Evans, was sentenced to death for one of those before Christie's guilt became unarguable. In 'Rillington Place', Tim Roth is excellent as the mass murderer, a sad little man for whom you might feel sorry if not for his method of relieving his frustrations. There's absolutely no hint of Hannibal Lecter about this man; yet he was horrifyingly effective in what he did. Overall, however, the drama is mostly painful, and while this is probably inevitable, what is lacking is a sense of ordinary life going on around the sad world of the Christie family. Instead, we see a world only of smog, austerity, and a mood of unremitting gloom - if London was really as dreary as this, it's a wonder there weren't thousands of Christies, not just one.

Another look at the Christie serial killer saga starring Tim Roth and Samantha Morton - what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot as it turns out mostly connected to the name of Craig Viveiros the director. The acting throughout was fine but the director decided to make the whole enterprise in the mode of a horror movie complete with dark lighting, dark sinister music and slo-mo sequences with yet more dark sinister soundscapes. The scenes that worked best had no music at all and were quite sinister enough because of the work and effort the actors had invested in them. Why Mr Viveiros decided that the audience would find it necessary to add a music track and film techniques to tell us what to think is beyond me? I addition to these shortcomings of the director. I must also add that there's almost no detail about the murders - no modus operandi - in fact, no fact! After the second episode I was compelled to look up Wikipedia and learned more in five minutes than I had in two hours. I persevered with the third episode partly so as not to waste the previous two hours but also because I was enticed by Tim Roth and Samantha Morton's performances. But in spite of them the whole experience still left me wishing I'd watched the movie with Richard Attenborough instead. Maybe I will do that anyway.

This was a very stylised dramatisation of the life and heinous crimes of serial-killer John Reginald Christie who besides killing seven women, his wife included and almost certainly a baby girl (to which he never confessed, right to the end), also caused the execution of one of the victim's husband, the hapless Timothy Evans, who was given a Royal Pardon in 1966 some 16 years after his hanging. Stylised in that the filming itself is low-key and washed-out in appearance, while the direction makes use of slow-motion shots, unusual camera-angles and a strangely disembodied soundtrack of contemporary songs, most notably "Whispering Grass".Then there's Tim Roth's turn as Christie, where he reminds me of none so much as Leonard Rossiter's classic comedy creation of Rigsby, another sleazy landlord-type but with a less murderous bent. Roth speaks in a hissing whisper, walks with a shambling gait in his miles-too-big overcoat and hides his evil behind a pair of National Health spectacles. Almost everywhere he goes, creepy background music surrounds him. I also found it strange that each episode started with a scene after his arrests, such as the discovery of the bodies in his bricked-up kitchen, before abruptly stepping back in time to depict the lead-up to the murders.Interestingly, there are almost no graphic recreations of his killings, rare but welcome in modern TV and cinema, indeed there's no murder shown in episode one at all, plus we only start the story after he's killed his first two victims, before the doomed Evans family arrive as upstairs neighbours. As I indicated, Roth's mannered acting dominates proceedings, not completely to the production's advantage, but there is good support from Nico Mirallegro as Evans and Samantha Morton as Christie's long-suffering wife. The period reproduction is up to the BBC's usual high standard. However, I never really felt at any point that Roth's Christie was truly evil, for example, there are only the vaguest hints of his necrophilia and while I can imagine the difficulty in compressing eight murders into a three hour duration, can't help but feeling the concentration on the Evans murders detracts from the fact that the man was an evil serial killer as well as showing a disrespect for his previous victims. Arguably, the key murder was the first one, which set him on his grisly path, yet we get no real indication it ever happened and are thus given no real motive as to how this lecherous little man could be driven to his terrible crimes.Naturally, those of us with longer memories will compare this dramatisation with the excellent feature film from the 1970's starring Richard Attenborough, where I sensed the aura of evil much more than Roth emanates here. Perhaps that was partly due to effective casting against type, but in the end I felt that the depiction of Christie was misguided here and that this, plus the strained direction ultimately detracted from the dramatic impact of the piece as a whole.

Rillington Place is a three part drama based on the events of the 1940s and 50s when John Christie (Tim Roth) is said to have murdered at least eight women in his dinghy and dank Notting Hill flat. One of the victims was his wife.The first episode was from the point of view of Ethel Christie (Samantha Morton.) The Christie's have had a turbulent marriage where they have separated in the past and they have moved to London from Yorkshire. There is distrust as she suspects her husband cavorting with prostitutes in seedy pubs.The second episode focuses on dim Tim Evans, the young man in over his head as his wife dies during a botched abortion and daughter later disappears and he is framed for their deaths.The final episode really goes in for the kill, the lies John Christie tells at Evan's trial and then we see him get rid of his wife and others before the authorities figure out that they might have executed the wrong man.The series really is dark and depressing as the grim post war years. The tale is told in a jumbled up narrative. Roth speaks in a quiet voice, he admits to almost emulating writer Alan Bennett in his tone of voice. However this is a chilling, devious man, involved in criminal activities throughout his life ranging from stealing to assaulting a woman with a bat.Roth had a hard act to follow, Richard Attenborough played John Christie in the film 10 Rillington Place. Here Roth is hemmed in by the script because it builds up slowly to Christie's murderous spree and because it wants to approach the drama through different perspectives.While I admire the period setting, all dimly lit and rather squalid. I also found the series insipid when it should had been horrifying.