It’s always noteworthy when Netflix produces a new series that lands a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critic score. Sometimes that’s deserved, other times less so, but in this case, I’ve actually already watched the entire thing, and I can say that this is the former.
The show is The Witness, a new limited series, very limited, with just three episodes, dramatizing the real-life killing of Rachel Nickell in the UK in 1992. The horrifying addendum was that her two-year-old son was the only witness to the crime, and had to draw on limited memory and communication skills to try and convey details about the murderer, who was, in fact, caught and convicted 16 years later.
The show splits time between when young witness Alex Handscombe and his father Andre were in the days, weeks and months after the murder as the police attempted to solve the case, and years later when Alex was a teen, and the case was reopened. The real murderer, Robert Napper, was eventually found through new evidence, including new DNA tech.
The story of The Witness is not just a tragedy on a human level; it’s also focused on the incompetence of the Metropolitan Police, who falsely accused a man of the crime and attempted to use a honeytrap to get him to incriminate himself. Charges were brought, but ultimately dismissed due to the controversial method. Stagg, the falsely accused, sued the police and eventually received £706,000 and a public apology. Even the undercover agent used to entrap Stagg sued and settled. It was also found that the police had many chances to apprehend Robert Napper before the murder, though no officer was charged as a result of that.
As for this adaptation, it’s powerful. Both versions of Alex, young and old, are heartbreaking in their own ways as they process the death as a toddler and teenager might. Andre’s roll is similarly tragic, misled by the police while dealing with trying to keep his son both physically safe, but also out of the spotlight that was shown on him his whole life, with the pair fleeing the country to try and get away from the press, which they never fully could.
It is an incredibly difficult story to retell, and to do it tastefully, a rare drama like this truly focused on the victim, rather than the killer, whose screen time is limited (though when he does appear, Steven Stamp’s Robert Napper is haunting. There’s also no graphic depictions of the dead, though the singular few frames of Alex covered in his mother’s blood are certainly unforgettable.
It may be a tough miniseries to get through, three episodes or not, but for “True Crime,” it’s tasteful and emotional in a way other adaptations are not.
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