The Ruth Ellis Files: A Very British Crime Story

An exceptional documentary driven at a fast consistent pace which nevertheless was thorough, probing and with prime interviewees. Even the novel short illustrative clips from various B&W crime films blended seamlessly. It managed to respect the subject, grieve for the injustice to Ruth Ellis yet be entertaining

The only criticism was the the film-makers imposition of a mistaken notion of '50s British morality as 19th C and Ruth Ellis as a "modern woman"..For obvious reasons men in general had a less judgemental view of night-club hostesses..It was wives who for understandable valid reasons saw such women (available willing and sexually skilled) as a real threat to marriages.(As happened in India when young English women went there as wives and promptly ended the previous regime of racial boundary-free relationships) However equally the murder was a crime of passion - Ruth Ellis shot the man who done her wrong and many women felt sympathetic.to her.

Apart from this it is an exceptional documentary which did justice to the story in a way neither earlier documentaries or the film had done. A rare thing - a documentary worth repeated viewings.

Not only do you look into the case of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in the Uk, but also into her family and the chance of a conspiracy theory, very interesting!

This documentary provides an excellent analysis of the evidence and raises serious questions about the police and legal procedures in the 1950s. However, it is undermined by numerous film clips, most of a whimsical nature, that are inserted throughout the programmes. Those depicting court scenes could be said to aid a viewer's understanding of how a courtroom would have looked, but the ridiculous clips from US and other movies were out of place and, for me, spoiled the documentary.

The Ruth Ellis story has and always will be interesting and this documentary is not different. However watching this documentary, its clear that Gillian Pachter had already made up her mind that Desmond Cussen's was involved in the murder which i found very irritating as she made wild assumptions that could not be proved and therefore pointless. The fact is that Ellis was tried under the rules and regulations of 1955 Britain, many of the things done then - Police Investigations, Diminished Responsibility, etc, etc ,etc have been subsequently researched and improved upon. While the documentary is good at hi-lighting that Ellis would have probably not hanged, if the trial had occurred a few years later, i am sure that same logic could be applied to hundreds of other hangings throughout time. As i said earlier, my only complaint was Pachter, who obviously had decided she wanted to directly link Cussens to the case and perhaps make a exclusive discovery, ignored facts and went leaping to other possible assumptions even when the experts shes was asking told her otherwise.