This four-part ITV series dramatises the unflinching and unceasing efforts of a middle-aged mother, Ann Ming, to get justice for her 22 year old daughter Julie, who in 1989 was brutally killed in her own home by one William Dunlop. In large part due to incompetent police investigative work at the time, Dunlop twice managed to escape his merited conviction in court. For Mrs Ming, her daughter's cause (she later published a book on her legal struggles called "For the Love of Julie") became the driving force in her life as she refused to abandon her fight to get Dunlop fully convicted for his crime.
Soon after his acquittal, Dunlop was boasting aloud how he'd escaped justice, secure in the knowledge, or so he thought, that under Britain's centuries-old Double Jeopardy law, he couldn't be tried again for the same alleged crime. Years later, she was in court again pursuing Dunlop for perjury after he'd been recorded on tape by a prison governor openly confessing to murdering Julie. While this added six years to an existing seven-year sentence he was serving for a separate attempted murder conviction, this still didn't satisfy Ann who had sworn on her daughter's life to get her girl full justice in her name.
This meant her going all the way up through her helpful local MP, Frank Cook, the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, the Law Commission and finally members of the House of Commons and crucially the House of Lords to have the Double Jeopardy law repealed and enacted on a retrospective basis. This meant that Dunlop could stand trial once again for Julie's killing, where this time he was belatedly, some thirteen years later, found guilty of Julie's murder and fittingly sentenced to life imprisonment.
Starring British television's pre-eminent mini-series actor Sheridan Smith, as the combative Mrs Ming, this production certainly did her proud and closed appropriately with the cast movingly applauding on to the set the real-life lady herself just as the end-credit titles rolled.
As is typical with true-crime dramas of this ilk, certain scenes seemed somewhat staged and / or over-dramatised for effect, like the flashback scene of Ann and her Chinese-descended husband being victims of racial prejudice when they first set up home here together or even the ghostly reappearance of Julie in the wake of her killer's rightful incarceration, but I didn't personally find too much artifice elsewere to detract from such an important story with its historic impact on the law of the land.
The early 90's era was well-captured and the acting by Smith and her ailing but supportive husband Charlie, played by Daniel York-Lo, was first-rate. All in all, I think this programme did a good job in re-telling this vital true story, especially while its real-life protagonist was alive to see it, although sadly her supportive husband died some years ago.
