“There’s a horrible smell in the bathroom.” Spoken in the context of a true crime series, there are few sentences more harrowing. And yet in the case of ITV’s latest primetime drama I Fought the Law, that horrible smell – and the dead body it emanates from – is only the beginning.
The four-episode series tells the true story of Ann Ming, who in 1989 discovered her daughter’s body hidden beneath a bathtub at her home in Billingham. It was Ann’s relentless, decades-long campaign for justice that led to the overturning of England’s 800-year-old law of double jeopardy. Over four hours, I Fought the Law covers its ground meticulously, placing Ann neck-deep in a punitive and bureaucratic legal morass. It’s the sort of David v Goliath story that television loves; the involvement of the real Ann, a retired surgical nurse who is now 79, goes a long way in assuaging any ill-feeling over yet another true crime adaptation.
The first episode plays out like every parent’s nightmare. Ann (Sheridan Smith, typically great) picks up her grandson from her daughter Julie (Victoria Wyant), who is heading off to a night shift at the local pizza restaurant. They hug goodbye. The next day, Julie doesn’t answer the door. She doesn’t answer her phone. No one has heard from her. Days pass. The police are no help: Julie, they insist, must have just swanned off to London without notice. They drop the case. Eighty days later, prompted by that “horrible smell”, Ann finds Julie’s body hidden in the bathroom of her own home.
The evidence against one suspect, a neighbour Billy Dunlop, is staggering: Julie’s keys were found under the floorboards of his house; his hair discovered on her body and the blanket in which she was wrapped. Yet twice, a jury fails to reach a verdict. In accordance with the double jeopardy law (preventing anyone from being tried twice for the same crime), Dunlop cannot be tried for murder again.
As Ann, Smith is dogged in her pursuit of justice. Her husband, meanwhile, the bespectacled, cardigan-cuddly Charlie (Daniel York Loh), is her foil, retreating from the world. But Ann is fragile, too – she wears her wrath and northern ire like a mourning veil. It’s a performance that calls to mind Smith’s role as a similarly grieving mother in 2022’s BBC drama Four Lives.
Like that show, which chronicled the egregious police failures that further enabled serial killer and rapist Stephen Port, I Fought the Law, too, is an agonising watch. There is not only the staggering police incompetence and arrogance – in the first episode, one officer patronisingly tells Ann that their highly trained forensic experts did not find anything in the house, only for Ann to happen across her daughter’s body in that same house months later – but the inane injustice of a system set up ostensibly to protect.
Through Smith, we witness Ann’s tenacity: she writes mountains of letters, and meets with a string of MPs, some more helpful than others. It’s a perfect depiction of how real change is made – through slow, steady progress. It can, however, make for monotonous TV and as the series steers (rightfully) away from salacious legal drama territory, it does drag slightly. Regardless, Ann’s story – and Julie’s – is one that deserves attention, a necessary reminder that sometimes all it takes is, in fact, one person to make a difference.
