Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Joanne Froggatt, Alun Armstrong, Isla Mowbray, Laura Morgan, George Kent, Jonas Armstrong, Emma Fielding, Hayley Walters, John Hollingworth, Alexander McMonigle, Seamus O’Neill, John Bowler, Sam Hoare, Tom Varey, Penny Layden, George Potts, Paul Bentall, Isobel Dobson, Bill Fellows, Mike Burnside, Edward Gower, Niall Ashdown, Thomas Howes, Mark Underwood, Nigel Cooke, Jake Lawson, Jacob Anderton, Mark Holgate, Joanna Horton, Laura Jane Matthewson, Paul Brennen, Ferdy Roberts, Michael Culkin, Shaun Prendergast, Phil Cheadle.
The mind of the serial killer is one that proves endlessly fascinating to some, and disturbingly too close for comfort for others, they recognise the failings of the personality and the culpability of the brain and the less they witness such atrocities, the safer they feel; and yes, to an extent, you can avert your gaze from the darker side of humanity. However, by doing so you then turn a blind eye to learning, of how to spot potential homicides, of how to save lives in the midst of a person’s sense of reality losing its grip, of embracing evil.
We tend to focus on the dominance of men when it comes to such darkness, the tendency to look at psychologically as a emblem of power, of lust, perhaps impotence, determining certain factors accredited to sex and the need to control, yet we rarely dig in our own minds to the thought of environmental, of the past effects on the young fragile intellect, the damage done and how the consequences then influence the future.
In 2016’s Dark Angel the serial killer is given a feminine face, a woman’s mind and one perhaps we seek to understand more of how personal fortune can put pressure on the actions of one caught between losing a child, and how darkness can stealthy swim into view, how it can take over.
Based upon the life of one of the first known female British serial killer, Mary Ann Cotton, the writers of the two part serial allude to the mental breakdown in the reasoning of the woman and asks by way of inference whether the loss of four children could have brought on a schism in the mind, or indeed if the murderous cravings were always there, that the first of her children to die could have been part of a issue that would have been noticed a lot sooner today, Munchausen by Proxy for example, or some sort of imbalance in which saw her grief magnify. It was certainly not until the idea of gain by way of insurance though that we see this root of evil finally take shape.
For Joanna Froggatt, Dark Angel was surely the moment in which the years of hard work, of playing instantly likeable and caring characters, paid off, as she shed her own metaphorical acting skin to portray Mary Ann Cotton. It is a performance that is light years from anything she has been cast as before, and yet it is with absolute charm and terror between the eyes that she carries off the role of a killer incredibly well.
There is a coloration between sex and financial gain when it comes to female serial killers, the first normally extenuated by the men in their lives, for example the evil that haunts Saddleworth Moor in the despicable acts by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, there is even the pretext of revenge, notably in the case of Aileen Wuornos who before her execution in 2002 said, “There’s no chance in keeping me alive or anything, because I’d kill again. I have hate crawling through my system”. However; the thought of a woman murdering her way through a family still remains baffling to some and in Dark Angel that sense of ambiguity, of whether they were killed because of sickness, because of greed, or by some other random breakdown in the psychology in Mary Ann Cotton will perhaps remain forever unknown.
A terrifying glimpse into the world of a woman driven to commit such acts of atrocity, of cunning, that is the message to which makes this particular story one of a compelling nature, one brought to life by the passion captured by Joanna Froggatt.
Ian D. Hall