Pun Salad

Yorkshire is apparently not just the name of a kind of pudding, but an actual place in England. And back in the 1970s, it hosted a serial murderer known as the "Yorkshire Ripper". This inspired a series of four novels by English author David Peace, which (in turn) gave rise to a series of three BBC TV movies, of which this is the first. And Ridley Scott is (apparently) going to do a version set in the US of A. I got the first movie in the BBC trilogy via Netflix.

The protagonist, Eddie, is a journalist, slinking back to Yorkshire after a vague professional failure down south. He takes a job as a crime reporter for the local newspaper, and his first assignment is to cover the story of a missing young girl. He notices similarities to previous unsolved cases, gets curious, and starts poking around. Unfortunately, he meets up with a morass of unsavoriness: don't-rock-the-boat superiors, a corrupt and brutal police force, a shady developer, his loony wife, a homosexual prostitute, a reporter colleague who turns up dead in an "accident," the mother of one of the missing girls who knows more than she's telling. Eddie finds himself in well over his head.

It's all very bleak, dark, moody, and depressing. Eddie's not much of a hero. And (slight spoiler alert) there is no uplifiting, inspiring ending. Held my interest, but not really my cup of tea. Unfortunately, I have this compulsion: you see one movie in a trilogy, you really have to see them all, right? So, eventually…