It’s no spoiler to disclose that Ruth Ellis (Lucy Boynton), the lead character within the new four-episode crime present A Merciless Love, died by hanging on July 13, 1955. Ruth was an actual girl who dedicated a really actual crime: She shot her lover, David Blakely (Laurie Davidson), on Easter the yr of her dying. However what led the nightclub hostess to hold out such a horrible act?
That’s the query behind A Merciless Love, BritBox’s glorious true-crime drama that explores Ruth’s motivations behind David’s homicide, the following trial that dominated the tabloid press and her dying by execution, which continues to be the final time a lady was put to dying for her crimes in the UK.
This story has been informed earlier than, most notably within the 1985 movie Dance with a Stranger, however by no means as absorbing and detailed as it’s right here. As Ellis, Boynton is rarely higher enjoying a lady left with few choices in life. The present convincingly evokes a interval when scandal might spoil reputations and a criminal offense of ardour might captivate a still-innocent public.