The Suzy Lamplugh Mystery

Well-paced, thorough, eye-opening and emotional.

Having read good reviews and media coverage, I wasn't disappointed, as often happens, when I caught this on catch-up with Sky Crime/Now TV.

This was victim-focused, getting a feeling for who Suzy was.

Some powerful interviews, great family photos and general archive footage of the times and places. Most of all, the filmmakers unpacked the detail and theories at tof what could have happened, right down to opposing police theories, with a fine toothcomb, well-wielded. It is obvious that she must have known her killer and covered for this fact in the famous diary entry before she vanished.

The film made a very convincing case as to who the killer was. I hope he never gets out.

As a young woman I lived for a few years in the area of London at the time these events took place, so I found this doubly chilling.

The documentary kept the victim and her family front and centre at all times, and you got a real sense of who Suzy Lamplugh was, unlike the clichés in some newspaper coverage.

The interviewees were excellent, and the mystery of what could have happened that day tackled from every angle.

An excellent and moving piece of work. What a tragedy, but one rightly remembered.

Unfortunately for this "updated" documentary about the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh, it was launched three months after an almost identical superior production from Channel 5, also revealing the alleged "new" and never acted-on canal deposition evidence.

At two episodes, it is too long and ploddy, and It reveals, like all previous documentaries, that the Metropolitan Police were slow to act and lost vital information, had at least three officers in charge (including the re-investigation) and were prejudice against certain suspects in the late eighties. They had (and have) a fixed scenario of events at the time and this has never changed, even though a retired police officer have offered an alternative suspect and scenario in recent years.

For any person interested in the case, and viewed previous documentaries, there is very little new worth viewing, the documentary has retained the same clips and police officers that have been used previously in "Real Crime" 2001 and "Crimes That Shook Britain" 2008, although included in this film are narrative excerpts from Suzy's Diary and the excellent book by Andrew Stephen (which is more informative than any film documentary on the subject).

A fresh look at her disappearance is required, with a more in-depth investigative approach, and I would have preferred a possible new scenario being played out by the producers, instead of the retired case police officers fixed rhetoric.