The hunt for Raoul Moat
Judgement: ****
Even before the trailers for this three-part true crime drama started rolling, shotgun killer Raoul Moat’s name had toxic celebrity status.
Moat, a wife and child molester who also inflicted life-changing injuries on his ex-girlfriend and a randomly chosen police officer, was an inhuman piece of scum. If there was any justice, his name would be erased from the record – a posthumous cancellation.
Instead, as The Hunt For Raoul Moat (ITV) astutely acknowledges, he rose to fame as an anti-hero, hailed by some on the internet as a modern-day outlaw. More than a decade later, it’s possible to see him as the forerunner of macho social media “influencers” who boast of treating women as possessions and sex objects.
Starring Matt Stokoe as the killer and Lee Ingleby as the detective leading the search, this series began running for three consecutive nights, with Moat’s misguided fans laying flowers and stuffed animals at the spot where he died.
“We’re here,” says a mother of her rowdy teenage boys, “because Raoul Moat is a hero to us.”
Instead, as The Hunt For Raoul Moat (ITV) astutely acknowledges, he rose to fame as an anti-hero, hailed by some on the internet as a modern-day outlaw.
Most of the first episode focused on Moat’s former partner Samantha (played by Sally Messham, right)
The story rolled back 12 months and from there the events unfolded almost like a very detailed police report – in chronological order, with no flashbacks or subplots. The result was somewhat unimaginative – but when the facts are so strange, fiction is superfluous.
Most of the first episode focused on Moat’s former partner Samantha (Sally Messham) and her boyfriend Chris (Josef Davies), whose death at the hands of Moat was all but overlooked amid the surreal events that followed.
Stokoe boiled with rage when the controlling, self-pitying ex-bouncer went to jail for assaulting his nine-year-old daughter.
Upon his release, after serving only four months in prison, he announced his intention to harm Samantha. The prison service tried to alert the Northumbria police, but they did nothing.
It would be easy for writer Kevin Sampson to make heroes out of every copper in this story.
After all, Officer David Rathband, who had been ambushed in his squad car, suffered horrific injuries – blinded by the shotgun blast.
He never recovered and sadly a broken man took his life 20 months later.
But the truth is more nuanced. The police did not take the threats against Samantha seriously and, even after Moat shot both her and Chris at close range, tried to play down the crime as “a housemate.”
There is an unspoken sense that officers viewed routine violence against women committed by men they knew as hardly significant enough to warrant investigation.
This is a complex story, one laid out with clinical precision in the Daily Mail’s timeline on Saturday.
If you still have that paper handy, I recommend keeping it open tonight, because every scene is full of facts.
We see the events not only from the point of view of the police and Moat himself, but also through the eyes of each victim’s family as well as the press: Sonya Cassidy plays a local reporter trying to keep her editor away from melodrama.
During the show, the police track down the killer. We see the events not only from the point of view of the police and Moat themselves, but also through the eyes of each victim’s family
There is an unspoken sense that officers viewed routine violence against women committed by men they knew as hardly significant enough to warrant investigation
Josef Davies as Chris Brown and Sally Messham as Samantha Stobbart in The Hunt For Raoul Moat
Stokoe must project a monstrous threat to ensure we never mistake him for the victim of media hysteria. He did this in a series of prison scenes
With so much going on, Stokoe must project a monstrous threat to ensure we never mistake him for the victim of media hysteria. He did this in a series of prison scenes, culminating in a chilling encounter with Samantha in the prison’s visiting room.
Simmering with violence, he showed how Moat used every trick he knew to control people: physical intimidation, sarcasm and humiliation, flattery, bullying and silence.
Like a half-crazy animal in a cage, he left no one in doubt that he would tear his victims apart if he ever got the chance.
Most terrifying of all, he was about to be released – and the justice system was powerless to respond until his killing spree began.