This Prime Video British Series Is a Hidden Gem For All True Crime Fans
Your dreams of visiting the U.K. may be ruined.
Despite the fact that all it takes to learn about a number of mankind's most horrific crimes is to turn on the criminal newscast, many viewers still strive to learn more about the people behind these atrocities and what motivates them.
One of the most high-profile premieres in the true crime genre in 2024 is Dick Wolf's Homicide, released on Netflix. However, Homicide doesn't even come close to the nightmarish details revealed in the British series The Long Shadow, which explores the story of the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper.
Is The Long Shadow Based on Real Life Story?
A seven-part British true crime drama television series, written by George Kay and directed by Lewis Arnold, based on real events during the investigation of the murders and attempted murders that took place over a 5-year period between 1975 and 1980. Murders committed by a man named Peter Sutcliffe, who was recently given a name the Yorkshire Ripper.
Later sentenced to twenty concurrent life sentences, which were commuted to life imprisonment, Sutcliffe took the lives of 13 young women and attacked 7 others, bringing the total number of his victims to 20, most of them sex workers.
The Long Shadow seeks to answer the questions that enraged the public during the manhunt.
The British police have been heavily criticized for their incompetence in handling the case. Considering the high number of victims and the heavy media coverage, there was a lot of misleading information, but they managed to question the killer 5 times during the whole manhunt and failed to recognize him.
The miniseries stands with an 86% critics score and 100% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, with both claiming that the strength of the show is its approach to true crime cases. Rather than focusing on the person of a killer, The Long Shadow tells the stories of his victims, showing how hard it was to fight prejudice in order to bring them justice.
The series began airing on ITV1 on September 25, 2023, and later that year it was announced that Amazon Prime Video, among other distributors, would help the miniseries reach a global audience. You can stream The Long Shadow on Prime Video today.