Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
We can discuss crime in its most violent form, that of the act of murder, all day, the subject matter is of a constant interest to many, the chance to play detective with no formal training, offering a conclusion via an opinion, and yet we will only offer measured or emotional thought when it comes to men accused and found guilty of the heinous offence; when it comes to discussing women who fall from grace we often gloss over it with platitudes or the observance that the act itself was one of subversion of gender.
In the third series of Lady Killers, Lucy Worsley, along with a multitude of historians and authors, take another in-depth, and indeed in-death, look at many of history’s accused, some rightly so, and others to whom have been abused, let down, taken advantage of because of their position in life, and by doing so with a feminist approach to the questions posed, once more offer an insight into the crime with a perspective of more illuminating 21st Century understanding.
Lucy Worsley’s sense of history and the application to a modern mind is beyond reproach, a truth she has long established in various television serials, and as she engages the radio listeners once more, alongside Professor Rosalind Crone, and author Helen Lewis, in the debate, so the series lays down its mark in some of history’s more chilling tales.
Women such as Mary Surratt who was accused of being involved in the plot that saw President Lincoln assassinated in Ford’s Theatre, Alice Mitchell who murdered her lover Freda Ward after the young woman spurned her love in a time when American society’s complex structure wasn’t ready for the revelations that came forth, the cruelty of 19th Century indentured servitude in rural England as a young, abandoned woman is slain by her master’s wife, and the case of Maria Manning, the so called Lady Macbeth of Bermondsy who, along with her husband, killed and robbed a friend, for his money and shares; all these confound and twist the notion of how we view crime when committed by women.
Lady Killers finds ways to explain the action undertaken by the perpetrators of the murder, to understand with a more crucial eye of feminism than could be attributed at the time and displays certain keen investigation which in today’s world would be given more credence and away from the butchery employed by men, but still none the less an horrific abuse of power and control.
The chill is in the air, the fire gently throws shadows on the room behind the sofa, a murder mystery explained; there is always room for Lucy Worsley’s take on how society views the actions of women who kill.
Ian D. Hall