Lucan review – stick with this wild documentary to the end and you will be astonished | Television

Richard John Bingham, the seventh Earl of Lucan, was declared lifeless in 1999, however that did nothing to halt the extremely worthwhile cottage business of hypothesis about him, which has chugged away since 1974, when he murdered Sandra Rivett, his kids’s nanny, then disappeared.

At first look, you would possibly suppose that this three-part documentary shall be one other contribution to this conspiracy-minded canon. However this isn’t a “have we discovered him?” movie. I can’t emphasise sufficient how a lot it’s price sticking with it till the top. What unspools is a generally tender, generally troubling rollercoaster that leads to surreal and sudden territory. There’s a pretend monk, catfishing, drag queens and Timothy Leary. You could have in all probability not seen this aspect of the Lord Lucan story earlier than.

The primary episode is essentially the most easy. The film-maker Colette Camden has discovered a brand new means of outlining what occurred on 7 November 1974. A builder in Hampshire known as Neil Berriman thinks he has tracked down Lucan, she explains. (There’s a sturdy argument that the true topic of the episodes is Berriman, not Lucan.) Berriman’s mom, who had adopted him, would speak to him a couple of “brown envelope” containing details about his organic dad and mom. For years, he wasn’t enthusiastic about even searching for it, however when he did ultimately open it, it delivered a shock: newspaper cuttings about one in all Britain’s most infamous crimes of the twentieth century. It revealed that his delivery mom was Rivett, the girl who had been taking care of Lucan’s kids for mere weeks when he bludgeoned her to demise.

As you’d anticipate from a contemporary documentary, and one which entails Rivett’s son, this shifts its emphasis from the headline-generating exploits of the “fugitive Lord” – the profligate gambler and drunk, recognized to his pals, paradoxically, as “Fortunate” – to the 29-year-old girl whom he murdered, the justice he eluded and the results of this violent crime for these left behind.

Berriman has made it his mission to study every part he can concerning the case – seemingly to the priority of his household – and episode one offers an summary of what he has found. There are interviews with individuals who knew Rivett, who knew Lucan, who attended the crime scene; and with individuals who, like Berriman, have made the investigation their major focus (though with out having the identical private attachment).

It’s right here that the sequence begins to rev up and velocity off into the gap, the place it shape-shifts into one thing else completely. Berriman has spent years working with the investigative reporter Glen Campbell, who has reported on the case extensively (and known as his canine Lucan). They’ve pursued numerous theories and potential sightings. The movie joins them as they’re on their strategy to confront a person they’ve tracked down in Australia, whom they appear sure is the aristocrat.

To observe this with a important eye is to note that we, the viewers, can’t see or hear a lot of their proof: a confidential police report that might compromise the job of the one who leaked it; a element given off‑digital camera by Lucan’s brother. There are lots of people saying “bullshit”. Usually, there isn’t a clear sense of what’s true and what the folks on the coronary heart of this story need to consider. (There may be, nevertheless, a transparent sense of how a lot a few of these males will make excuses for a good friend who brutally murdered a lady – a small however deeply miserable element.)

It isn’t a rigorous investigation a lot as an empathic portrait of human obsession. Camden is evidently keen on Berriman, and her involvement within the story grows extra pronounced because the episodes progress. I stored pondering of The Journalist and the Assassin, Janet Malcolm’s traditional examine of journalistic ethics and the connection between reporter and topic, questioning to what extent this documentary exists in a murky space. The programme offers Berriman (and, by extension, Rivett) a voice – and it’s laborious to disclaim that he deserves that voice.

By the point Lucan explodes into its surreal remaining act, you’ll be feeling astonished and uneasy about a few of the folks caught up within the whirlwind of pursuit. This extraordinary documentary lingers within the thoughts and leaves much more questions behind it than whether or not or not Lucan lived past 1974.