The Claremont Murders

This is a very sad story, and I hope the one family can finally get closure in the not too distant future. Any murder is, of course, extremely sad and disgusting. There's never an excuse. I personally do not believe in the death penalty, which is probably not an option in Australia anyway. In my opinion, a person that commits murder should just sit in a prison with no chance of getting out and living a life that they could've had if they didn't do such terrible things. I can only imagine the grief of the families who have lost loved ones to murder. I even feel sorry for the family members of the murderer. If they were good people which is not always the case I don't think it's that unusual for a murderer to have had a violent or very terrible childhood.

I just couldn't get over the editing and cutting of this series. A rather conservative camerawork glued together from scene to scene, interrupted by badly choosen soundtrack, with the introduction of news-flashes in a serial-killer-documentary-style killed all my will to get through this to the end. All the emotions of the victims families got lost for me on the way as they appeared just as another part of the first-aid-kit in movie-editing. None of the characters mattered to me, couldn't feel any dynamics no matter how dramaticly fast the police-actors tried to speak to create some and got into their analysis.

I wish you the best of luck to get through over two an a half hours of this, I didn't have that.

Both the problem and the strength of this two-part police procedural is that it's based -- quite closely, it would seem -- on a string of three actual murders. As a result, it feels very real, especially as to police errors and inefficiency, as well as to the long time involved in bringing the case to a close. To its credit, it is anything but "neat."

On the other hand, thanks to its apparent allegiance to the truth, the case itself isn't terribly gripping. Obviously any serial-killer drama will have inherent interest -- we want to see the monster brought to justice -- but I doubt you'll come away entirely satisfied.

Worse, the characters (as some have complained here) are bland, and their dialogue consists almost entirely of exposition, often of one cop telling another something the latter would already know, simply to explain the progress of the case to the TV audience. (There's also one cringeworthy little attempt to inject some romance into the plot.) Sometimes the task of exposition is left to a local TV reporter who conveniently keeps popping up. She's rather annoying.

Brief as it is, the entire series feels at least half an hour too long, with too much uncomfortable time devoted to the grief of the victims' bereaved families. And there's something just a little off, even a little amateurish, about the direction; cast members tend to stand with unnatural stiffness as they exchange their curt, exposition-laden dialogue.

Overall, this mini series could have been cut by 50% time-wise. The plot based on actual serial killings in Western Australia was intriguing. It took the police decades to find the killer who eluded them due to conflicting eyewitness accounts, an odd coincidence with a company van, and set during a time when DNA testing was not perfected. The police had everything working against them it seemed. I found the two main police investigators annoying because they always seemed on the brink of tears. I understood their frustration level as each time they took a step forward they took a step back toward solving the case. But tears at the workplace is very unprofessional especially for seasoned detectives. I blame the director for this uncharacteristic portrayal. The actors who played victims and family members were believable and should be commended.

Despite a few irritants, like the occasional overwhelming music and the frantic camera work, this fact-based series showed the many facets of police/detective/legal work that goes into solving murders. It also makes clear that for every direct murder victim there are many more casualties and that despite the formidable technology of DNA, results are still not as straightforward as they could and should be. Unfortunately, these sorts of murders are not fictional and are not becoming rarer. Although a very sad and tragic subject matter, this show has solid acting, minimal violence and lots of personal angles that let you into the heart of these people and events.