The Hunt For Raoul Moat
Rating: ****
Even before the trailers started running for this three-part true crime drama, the name of shotgun killer Raoul Moat had a toxic celebrity status.
Moat, a wife-beater and child abuser who also inflicted life-changing injuries on his ex-girlfriend and a policeman picked at random, was a sub-human piece of scum. If there was any justice, his name would be wiped from the record – a posthumous cancelling.
Instead, as The Hunt For Raoul Moat (ITV) shrewdly recognises, he achieved notoriety 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 ‘influencers’ on social media who boast about treating women as possessions and sex objects.
Starring Matt Stokoe as the killer and Lee Ingleby as the detective leading the search, this serial running on three consecutive nights opened with Moat’s deluded fans placing flowers and soft toys at the spot where he died.
‘We’re here,’ says one mother with her thuggish teenage boys, ‘because Raoul Moat is a hero to us.’
Instead, as The Hunt For Raoul Moat (ITV) shrewdly recognises, he achieved notoriety as an anti-hero, hailed by some on the internet as a modern-day outlaw
Most of the first episode centred on Moat’s former partner Samantha (played by Sally Messham, right)
The narrative rolled back 12 months and, from there, events unfolded almost like a highly detailed police report – in chronological order, with no flashbacks or sub-plots. The result was slightly unimaginative – but when the facts are this strange, fiction is superfluous.
Most of the first episode centred on Moat’s former partner Samantha (Sally Messham) and her boyfriend Chris (Josef Davies), whose death at Moat’s hands was almost overlooked amid the surreal events that followed.
Stokoe was stewing in rage as the controlling, self-pitying ex-bouncer jailed for assaulting his nine-year-old daughter.
On his release, after serving a mere four-month sentence, he announced his intention to harm Samantha. The prison service tried to alert Northumbria Police – who did nothing.
It would be easy for writer Kevin Sampson to make heroes of every copper in this story.
After all, PC David Rathband, ambushed in his patrol car, was left with horrific injuries – blinded by the shotgun blast.
He never recovered and sadly, a broken man, took his own life 20 months later.
But the truth is more nuanced. Police failed to take the threats to Samantha seriously and, even after Moat blasted both her and Chris at point-blank range, tried to underplay the crime as ‘a domestic’.
There’s an unspoken sense that officers routinely regarded violence against women, committed by men they knew, as barely important 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 to hand, I recommend keeping it open tonight, because every scene is crowded with facts.
We see events, not only from the viewpoint of the police and Moat himself, but also through the eyes of each victim’s family and also the press: Sonya Cassidy plays a local reporter, trying to steer her editor away from melodrama.
Police track down the murderer during the show. We see events, not only from the viewpoint of the police and Moat himself, but also through the eyes of each victim’s family
There’s an unspoken sense that officers routinely regarded violence against women, committed by men they knew, as barely important enough to warrant investigation
Josef Davies as Chris Brown and Sally Messham as Samantha Stobbart in The Hunt For Raoul Moat
Stokoe needs to project a monstrous menace 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 needs to project a monstrous menace 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 jail’s visiting room.
Simmering with violence, he showed how Moat used every trick he knew to control people – physical intimidation, sarcasm and humiliation, wheedling, bullying and silence.
Like a half-crazed animal in a cage, he left no one in doubt that he would tear his victims apart if he ever got the chance.
What is most terrifying of all is that he was bound to be released – and the justice system was powerless to react until his killing spree began.
DailyMail
