Red Riding

Red Riding
Promotional release poster
Genre	Crime thriller Drama
Based on	Red Riding by David Peace
Written by	Tony Grisoni
Directed by	Julian Jarrold James Marsh Anand Tucker
Starring	Mark Addy Sean Bean Jim Carter Warren Clarke Paddy Considine Shaun Dooley Gerard Kearns Andrew Garfield Rebecca Hall Sean Harris Eddie Marsan David Morrissey Peter Mullan Maxine Peake Lesley Sharp Robert Sheehan Laura Carter Danny Mays Michelle Dockery
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	3
Production
Executive producer	Andrew Eaton
Producers	Anita Overland Wendy Brazington
Running time	120 minutes
Production company	Revolution Films
Original release
Network	Channel 4
Release	5 March (2009-03-05) – 19 March 2009 (2009-03-19)

Red Riding is a British crime drama limited series written by Tony Grisoni and based on the book series of the same name by David Peace. The series comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four (1999), Nineteen Seventy-Seven (2000), Nineteen Eighty (2001) and Nineteen Eighty-Three (2002), and the first, third, and fourth of these novels became three feature-length television episodes, Red Riding 1974, Red Riding 1980, and Red Riding 1983. They aired in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 beginning on 5 March 2009. The three episodes were released theatrically in the United States between 5 and 11 February 2010, by IFC Films.

The context of the second and third of the series uses fictionalized accounts of the investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who stalked the Yorkshire area of England in the 1970s and 1980s. The name of the series is a reference to the murders and to their location, the historic county of Yorkshire being traditionally divided into three areas known as ridings.

Overview

The events take place between 1974 and 1983 and are set against the background of the Yorkshire Ripper killings. Set in Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, and the rest of West Yorkshire, both books and films follow several recurring fictional characters through a bleak and violent world of police corruption and organised crime. The novels and television versions blend elements of fact, fiction, and conspiracy theory into a confection dubbed "Yorkshire Noir" by some critics. They offer a chronologically fractured narrative and do not present neat resolutions.

Plot summaries

Red Riding 1974

• Director: Julian Jarrold
• Technique: Super 16 mm film with an aspect ratio of 16:9
• Run time: 1 hour, 42 minutes
• Rating: 3.07m

1974. Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield), a cocky and naïve cub reporter for The Yorkshire Post, attends a press conference by DS Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey) regarding the disappearance of ten-year-old Clare Kemplay. Dunford learns about two earlier child disappearances: Susan Ridyard in 1969, and Jeanette Garland in 1972. Suspecting a connection, dismissing police suspicions of Gypsies, and spurred on by his friend and colleague Barry Gannon (Anthony Flanagan), he decides to investigate further.

An anonymous caller informs Dunford of an attack on a Gypsy camp near Hunslet. A meeting between Dunford and DCS Bill Molloy (Warren Clarke) is marked by mutual dislike.

Clare Kemplay appears murdered on a property belonging to John Dawson (Sean Bean), an unscrupulous local real estate developer. Dawson plans to build a shopping centre, using a combination of bribery (small ownership shares) and blackmail on local councillors and the newly formed West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police (WYMP) to secure land purchases and zoning approval.

Clare Kemplay's autopsy reveals that she was tortured, raped and strangled, and her killer stitched swan wings to her body. Gannon dies in an apparent freak accident, shortly after being warned of danger to his life by Dawson's unstable wife Marjorie. An elusive male prostitute named B.J. (Robert Sheehan) gives Dunford incriminating material gathered by Gannon about local officials. While investigating Gannon's death, Dunford believes he has found an ally in young Sgt. Bob Fraser (Steven Robertson).

Dunford visits Jeanette Garland's mother Paula (Rebecca Hall), whose husband had committed suicide due to their daughter's disappearance. This visit costs Dunford a beating from corrupt WYMP officers Tommy Douglas (Tony Mooney) and Bob Craven (Sean Harris), but Paula insists she had not alerted them.

Throwing caution to the wind, Dunford becomes romantically involved with Paula and ignores the officers' threats. He visits Marjorie Dawson in the nursing home where she recovers from the breakdown she had after speaking to Gannon. She hints at more crimes by her husband but is interrupted by Craven and Douglas, who beat Dunford severely and break his hand with a car door.

A Fitzwilliam local of half-Polish descent, Michael Myshkin (Daniel Mays), is arrested on suspicion for the Kemplay murder. It becomes obvious that Myshkin has a learning disability, barely speaks English and is given cues from the police. He implores his innocence, stating “[I]t was the wolf. Under those beautiful carpets”, but later confesses to murdering Kemplay, Garland and Ridyard while in custody.

Dawson approaches Dunford, feigning respect for Gannon, but drops his friendly façade and becomes aggressive when Dunford refuses a bribe. Dawson tacitly admits to having ordered Gannon's murder, the beatings on Dunford and the arson by the WYMP on the Roma camp in his land. Dunford learns that Paula is sexually involved with Dawson, whom she has known all her life.

Dunford knows Myshkin is innocent, but realises he is in over his head. He convinces Paula to escape Yorkshire with him, then briefly leaves to deliver Gannon's documents to Bob Fraser. Finding Paula missing upon his return, he storms a party in Dawson's palatial home looking for her. He is overpowered and arrested while Marjorie, echoing Myshkin's words, asks him to “tell them about the others, beneath the beautiful new carpets".

Dunford is physically and psychologically tortured by the police officers. Molloy shows him Paula's dead body and suggests the implication that Dawson killed her. The officer Dunford had trusted, Fraser, hands the Gannon documents to Jobson, who burns them at Molloy's behest. After torturing Dunford, Douglas and Craven give him a loaded handgun, obliquely stating that they need "a little favor" from him.

Bloody and frantic, Dunford heads to Dawson's private headquarters at the Karachi Club. He repeatedly pistol-whips Craven, shoots Douglas and Dawson's bodyguard, and questions the businessman at gunpoint while his unhinged wife mutters "the wolf does for John", again echoing Myshkin's cryptic statements. Dawson concedes that he is "no angel" and has "a private weakness", implying his connection to the child murders. Dunford shoots Dawson dead and flees in his car. Finding himself chased by police cars, he reverses course and deliberately drives towards them. A vision of Paula appears to him before his death in the ensuing collision.

Red Riding 1980

• Director: James Marsh
• Technique: 2-perf 35 mm film with an anamorphic aspect ratio of 2.35:1
• Run time: 1 hour, 33 minutes
• Rating: 1.99m

In 1980, following public outcry over the failure to catch the Yorkshire Ripper, a "squeaky clean" Manchester police detective, Assistant Chief Constable Peter Hunter (Paddy Considine), is assigned to travel to West Yorkshire to head the WYMP investigation, much to the chagrin of the former head, Bill Molloy. Hunter had previously worked on the Karachi Club massacre, a case he had to abandon due to his wife Joan's miscarriage. One member of Hunter's hand-picked team is Helen Marshall (Maxine Peake), his former adulterous lover. The other member is Detective Chief Superintendent John Nolan (Tony Pitts), who knows the WYMP officers well. The two cases – massacre and serial killings – are linked by Bob Craven, who behaves in an openly hostile manner to the new team. Hunter correctly deduces that the Ripper inquiry is being side-tracked by the Wearside Jack tapes, and feels that the real Ripper has been interviewed and missed.

Hunter suspects that one of the Ripper's supposed victims, Clare Strachan, was not actually a Ripper victim. Given the different types of injuries she displayed, she had not been linked to the other victims until a letter was sent, allegedly by the Ripper, to Molloy and the press claiming responsibility for her murder. Hunter receives information from B.J., who is introduced through Reverend Martin Laws (Peter Mullan). B.J., who was Strachan's close friend, claims that she was a prostitute working for Eric Hall, a now-dead WYMP policeman. Hall's wife requests that Hunter meet her, and after visiting her house – where Laws is also present – she provides proof of Hall's work as a pimp and pornographer. She confirms that Hall was a suspect in the Strachan case until the letter turned up. She also mentions that he was convinced (and increasingly vocal) that Strachan was not a Ripper victim, and posits that he was killed as a result. She says she had given Hall's documents to Jobson, but the latter claims to have lost the files. Meanwhile, the former affair between Hunter and Marshall threatens to reignite.

Hunter interrogates Detective Inspectors Dick Alderman (Shaun Dooley) and Jim Prentice (Chris Walker). Alderman lets slip that the Strachan murder was probably committed by Hall, covered-up to look like a Ripper murder. Hunter also visits the now debilitated Tommy Douglas who later phones him demanding that they meet at his house. However, Hunter arrives to find Douglas and his daughter killed. Hunter is seriously intimidated when he receives covertly taken photos of himself and Marshall in compromising positions. Their burgeoning affair is cut short when she reveals that she had fallen pregnant and had an abortion.

Near the end of Hunter's Christmas holiday, his Manchester house is burned down. Hunter then learns that his superiors have taken him off the Ripper case due to unspecified allegations of disciplinary breaches. He returns to West Yorkshire for a scheduled meeting with Jobson, but it appears, amid great fanfare, that the Yorkshire Ripper has been captured. The suspect confesses to all murders except that of Strachan, which he explicitly denies.

Hunter tracks down B.J. and forces him to reveal that five masked policemen burst into the Karachi Club shortly after Eddie Dunford's revenge on Dawson, killing all civilian witnesses and finding Bob Craven and Tommy Douglas wounded by Eddie. Strachan was a barmaid at the club; she and her friend B.J. witnessed everything while hiding behind the bar, and were spotted by Chief Constable Harold Angus (Jim Carter) and Craven as they fled the premises. B.J. is, therefore, the only surviving witness to the Karachi Club massacre, which forces him to flee town. B.J. also implies that Craven was the murderer of Strachan.

Hunter meets John Nolan in Millgarth Station, Leeds, to reveal this new information. Nolan takes Hunter downstairs to the cells where Hunter finds Craven slouched back in a chair, shot through his head. He realises that Nolan was one of the five who took part in the Karachi Club shootings, and Nolan quickly shoots him dead. Alderman and Prentice plant the gun, along with another, to make it look like Hunter and Craven shot each other. In a final scene, Joan Hunter is comforted by Reverend Laws at her husband's graveside.

Red Riding 1983

• Director: Anand Tucker
• Technique: taped with a Red One digital camera
• Run time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
• Rating: 2.05m

Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey) has spent years plagued by guilt over his reluctant participation in the corrupt activities within the WYMP, including a conspiracy protecting high-profile figures such as John Dawson.

It was Jobson who tipped off Dunford about the Roma camp arson, after partaking in it under pressure by Molloy. The camp site was vacated to pursue Dawson's £100m shopping centre investment along with Jobson, Molloy, Angus, Alderman, Prentice, Douglas, Craven, and Nolan from Manchester. This investment, and the vice racket whose proceeds helped fund it, were discussed before the events of the first episode, during the marriage of Molloy's daughter to Bob Fraser.

Jobson also knew about the innocence of Michael Myshkin, who confessed to the child murders in 1974. Flashbacks show that a witness placed Reverend Laws near where Clare Kemplay's body was dumped. Laws was tortured until he mentioned Dawson, who promptly corroborated the priest's alibi; this, and the businessman's ominous fascination with swans, pointed to Dawson and Laws' guilt, but Molloy ordered Jobson to keep his suspicions to himself.

Jobson's pangs of conscience intensify in 1983 when a girl named Hazel Atkins disappears, and he reopens the previous child murder cases. Angus allows Jobson to question Myshkin in jail, but orders Alderman to accompany him. Michael is unnerved and rendered incommunicative by Alderman's presence, suggesting that he was tortured in 1974.

Jobson starts a relationship with a medium, Mandy Wymer (Saskia Reeves), who knows important facts about the crimes. Angus dismisses Wymer's leads, reveals his knowledge of Jobson's tip to Dunford about the 1974 camp raid, angrily derides Jobson's scruples and orders him to retire quietly.

Meanwhile, John Piggott (Mark Addy), a solicitor and the son of a notorious WYMP officer, decides to explore the Atkins case himself after being contacted by Myshkin's mother, who believes that the new disappearance exonerates Michael. Michael repeats his cryptic 1974 statements about the "wolf" and reveals that his confession had been coerced by the police and his solicitor. Piggott's inquiries lead to Myshkin's friend, Leonard Cole (Gerard Kearns), who had found Kemplay's body and is now framed for Atkins' disappearance. Before Piggott can become his solicitor, Cole is tortured and murdered by Prentice and Alderman. Jobson cannot bring himself to witness Cole's final moments, officially disguised as a suicide.

Using information from Myshkin and his own childhood memories of Fitzwilliam, Piggott finds a mine shaft hidden in a pigeon shed near Laws's home. The underground tunnel is revealed to be the epicentre of a paedophile and child-murdering ring run by Laws and catering to citizens of diverse social relevance, including Dawson and Piggott's own father.

Details such as the ring's geographic sprawl, body count and number of surviving victims (including Myshkin) are left unknown. It is implied that the ring risked public scrutiny after children with known, stable local families disappeared. Such risk increased with the lurid media coverage of the Kemplay murder. This was the reason for the constables' indirect assistance in Dawson's demise, thereby solving what Angus called "two little problems" (a nosy, incorruptible journalist and a businessman with an out-of-control perversion) at the same time to protect their commercial centre investment. After 1974, Laws clearly counted on the complicity and cooperation of the WYMP; the reasons why he did not share Dawson's fate, and the degree of knowledge WYMP brass had of his activities before that year, are left unexplained.

Finally, it is also revealed that B.J. was the first child abused by this ring. After a stint in jail, B.J. returns to Laws' home to enact revenge, but in the last moment finds himself unable to do so due to Laws' mind-numbing, domineering influence on him. Laws restrains B.J. and is about to use an electric drill on his head when Jobson appears with a shotgun and shoots the reverend dead. He then opens the hidden entrance to the mine shaft just in time for Piggott to emerge from it with Hazel Atkins alive in his arms. B.J. flees southward by train, reflecting on his upbringing, his experiences, and his "escape" from the past of West Yorkshire. Thus, three characters – Jobson, Piggott, and B.J. – achieve some measure of redemption in the end.

Cast

Character	1974	1980	1983
DI Dick Alderman	Shaun Dooley
CC Harold Angus		Jim Carter
Hazel Atkins			Tamsin Mitchell
Mr Atkins			Andrew Cryer
Bet	Lynn Roden
BJ (older)	Robert Sheehan
BJ (younger)			James Ainsworth
Paul Booker	Ian Mercer		Ian Mercer
Sgt John Chain		James Weaver
Leonard Cole	Gerard Kearns		Gerard Kearns
Mary Cole	Cara Seymour		Cara Seymour
Sgt/DSupt Bob Craven	Sean Harris
John Dawson	Sean Bean		Sean Bean
Marjorie Dawson	Cathryn Bradshaw
Karen Douglas		Charlotte James
Sharon Douglas		Michelle Holmes
PC Tommy Douglas	Tony Mooney
Eddie Dunford	Andrew Garfield
Susan Dunford	Rachel Jane Allen
Uncle Eric	Graham Walker
HMIC Philip Evans		James Fox
Sgt Bob Fraser	Steven Robertson		Steven Robertson
Barry Gannon	Anthony Flanagan
Paula Garland	Rebecca Hall
Gaz	Danny Cunningham
George Greaves	Berwick Kaler
Bill Hadley	John Henshaw		John Henshaw
Elizabeth Hall		Julia Ford
Joan Hunter		Lesley Sharp
ACC Peter Hunter		Paddy Considine
Judith Jobson			Lisa Howard
DSupt/DCS Maurice Jobson	David Morrissey
Jim Kelly			Gary Whittaker
Mr Kemplay	Stewart Ross
Mrs Kemplay	Jennifer Hennessy
Rev Martin Laws	Peter Mullan
Clive McGuiness			Hilton McRae
HMCIC Sir John Marsden		David Calder
DC Helen Marshall		Maxine Peake
DCS/ACC Bill Molloy	Warren Clarke
Michael Myshkin	Daniel Mays		Daniel Mays
Mrs Myshkin			Beatrice Kelley
DCS John Nolan		Tony Pitts
John Piggott			Mark Addy
DI Jim Prentice	Chris Walker
Susan Ridyard			Emily Millicent Mott
CC Clement Smith		Ron Cook
Clare Strachan	Kelly Freemantle
Peter Sutcliffe		Joseph Mawle
Kathryn Tyler	Michelle Dockery		Michelle Dockery
Steph	Katherine Vasey
Tessa			Catherine Tyldesley
Michael Warren		Nicholas Woodeson
Jack Whitehead	Eddie Marsan
Aunt Win	Rita May
Mandy Wymer			Saskia Reeves

Filming and production

On 8 and 10 September 2008 the cast and crew were spotted filming at the Connaught Rooms on Manningham Lane, and a Victorian house on the corner of Selbourne Mount and North Park Road, just across the road from Cartwright Hall in Lister Park, Manningham, Bradford, West Yorkshire, which was also used. On 5 October Sean Bean, Paddy Considine, Jim Carter, Warren Clarke, Chris Walker, Sean Harris and James Weaver were spotted filming at the Connaught Rooms again, which was used multiple more times in the following weeks. The cast and crew were later spotted filming in Little Germany, Bradford. Filming also took place at the former Presbyterian Church on 1 Simes Street, Bradford, which was being used as the Koh-I-Noor Indian restaurant at the time, was used as The Karachi Club in the trilogy. The former Bradford Central Police Station on The Tyrls in Bradford city centre, which has since been demolished and built over with Bradford City Park, was also used.

Other locations included Seacroft Hospital and Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, West Yorkshire. The Brudenell was also used as The Karachi Club in the trilogy. HM Prison Leeds, Cookridge Hospital, and The Yorkshire Post's Wellington Street building which was demolished in 2014, in Leeds were also used.

Filming also took place at Arden Road Social Club in Halifax, West Yorkshire, the National Coal Mining Museum for England in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

Historical basis

The television trailers for all three Red Riding episodes bore the tagline "Based on True Events". Nevertheless, none of the characters, nor the murder victims, bear the names of real people and only a few have obvious real-life models.

The wrongful prosecution and imprisonment of the character Michael Myshkin is a clear parallel to the real-life case of Stefan Kiszko, falsely accused of and convicted for the killing of 11-year-old Lesley Molseed in 1975. He was later proved innocent.

The mission and subsequent official vilification of Assistant Chief Constable Peter Hunter in Red Riding 1980 are strongly reminiscent of the case of John Stalker, a real life Deputy Chief Constable of the Greater Manchester Police who headed an investigation into the shooting of suspected members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1982.

Awards and nominations

The films won The TV Dagger at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards. At the 2010 British Academy Television Awards, the series was nominated for Best Drama Serial while Rebecca Hall won Best Supporting Actress.

Theatrical film adaptation

Columbia Pictures acquired the rights to adapt the novels and films into a theatrical film. The studio was negotiating with Ridley Scott in October 2009 to direct.

The trilogy was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States by IFC Films on 5 February 2010.

Overseas broadcasting

The series has been aired by Danish public broadcaster DR1 on two occasions under the title Pigen med den røde hætte (The Girl with the Red Cap). It has also been aired by SVT in Sweden, by Rai 4 in Italy, by ARD in Germany, and by SBS in Australia.

External links

• Red Riding – official site
• "Filming wraps on new Channel 4 drama serial Red Riding" (Press release). Channel 4.
• Northern Exposure, The Guardian, 28 February 2009
• Review, Leicester Mercury
• Review by Roger Ebert, 10 March 2010
• Red Riding Trilogy at Rotten Tomatoes
• Red Riding: 1974 at IMDb
• Red Riding: 1980 at IMDb
• Red Riding: 1983 at IMDb
• Detailed plot synopses