Until I Kill You

Not only is this a compelling, uncomfortable drama, one almost unique in not seeking to exploit misogynistic violence for kicks, but also an indictment of a judicial system where everyone involved is clearly compromised by seeing the victim as a means to their end career-wise. The police want a conviction and the criminal is the target and the victim is merely the enabling ammunition to achieve this; a passive cipher best forgotten afterwards unless they become useful again.

The viewer is also forced to confront their expectations of a true-crime victim. Typically these are vulnerable and quite passive individuals lacking confidence and not infrequently conventionally attractive as film and television producers seek to manipulate empathy from their audiences by all means at their disposal. Delia Balmer/Anna Maxwell Martin does not bow to this convention and the syrup-free drama is all the better for presenting a victim in the round.

If you've never known a person on the spectrum as Delia obviously is, you will have a difficult time empathizing with her during her horrific ordeal.

She can be cold, abrupt, and abrasive, even to the extent of seeming to make a bad situation even worse, shutting down, shutting people out, blaming and lashing out at others.

But that is not at all who Delia truly is. Those are her defense mechanisms when it comes to dealing with the real world.

I have a dear and close relative on the spectrum just exactly like Delia. She is extraordinarily brilliant, funny, and has the most tender of hearts. However, that is not how she will come off to most people she is not close to or trusts implicitly. She is an extremely literal person and very exacting about how things should be "just so", and very direct in her speech to the point of appearing rude or blunt.

But this all a result of her disability, though I dislike that word in reference to her.

She's just different, and only those who truly know her for who she is, and genuinely love her, get to see what an enormous heart she has within, coupled with a childlike innocence that struggles to live and cope in our harsh world, even in the best of circumstances.

Were my relative ever, God forbid, to have experienced anything even remotely like the horrific ordeal Delia did, I cannot even imagine how soul shattering an affect it would have on her.

Delia managed not just to survive, but even to thrive in spite of all of she went through. That in itself was a remarkable story.

P. S. I love Shaun Evans (Endeavor), but can't say I like him playing such a baddie. Makes me sad.

I dipped my reluctant toe in, thinking that, despite the content, this would be a poorly delivered presentation of a female's time of horrors.

So many of these programmes can turn to sentimentality or sensationalism and can make a viewer miss the point or worst still, be manipulated into anguished responses.

I was wrong, the performance from Anna Maxwell-Martin was so good, that it felt like listening to Delia. It is Delia, who kept me watching, it is Delia, who made this an exceptional programme.

Delia was hard work, even before the troubles, her intransigence in the face of what I guess she considered petty rules and conventions, does not endear her to others.

As an aside, I will add a further two comments.

The sheer frustration of watching, yet again, the keystone cops, metaphorically fumbling around in an unlit room, simply because they could not be bothered to switch the light on, was palpable.

The anger one felt at the judicial system that allows clearly vulnerable victims to be pilloried in the witness box was at a peak.

Enough said; I highly recommend the programme.

One of those shows where you hover between "Surely it couldn't have happened like that!" and "How on earth can people be so incompetent?" It's a true story, though, and from what we know of other cases, the failings of the police and the demands of the criminal justice system damage far too many victims - which was Delia case.

Anne Maxwell Martin plays Delia with an extraordinary intensity, rarely making it easy to like her: she is irrascible, mercurial and unpredictable.

Shaun Evans is truly scary, switching from the quiet and self-effacing shy man Deliameets in a pub, to a furious and violent narcissist with a dark, dark past.

A very well-written, cleverly-paced and carefully directed short series.

Engaging story and great acting. The lead actress's dialect did not bother me as it did others but it was definitely noticeable. She did an incredible job though. Great acting by the lead actress and everyone else.

I'd read an article that while working on the script the writer worried about how people would find empathy or be on the side of someone.with an "unconventional personality." She was quirky for sure. I didn't find that distractive though. I did however find her abusive to the people trying to help her. I found it difficult to watch because she was quite simply not a likable person. That does not mean she deserved anything that happened to her or that she caused it in any way. It just means it's understandably challenging to tell her story. Others have pointed out that she would of course have anger. I agree. But that anger was directed at other people. People that cared about her and were trying to help. For me this made the series difficult to watch.