Cast: Luke Evans, Keith Allen, Caroline Berry, Oliver Ryan, Alexandria Riley, Charles Dale, David Fynn, Steve Meo, Richard Corgan, Kyle Lima, Steffan Cennydd, Simon Nehan, Roger Evans, Rhodri Evan, Anastasia Hille, Simon Armstrong, William Thomas, Suzanne Packer, Owen Teale, Rhys Parry Jones, Ian Saynor, Ioan Hefin, Mabli Jen Eustace, Edward Llewelyn, Sara Gregory, Vern Griffiths, Amy Morgan, Hywel Morgan, Llinor ap Gwynedd.

There is a fine line between murder created for entertainment and imaginative stimulation and the real-life experience of those who have lost loved ones due to the most heinous of acts that one person can inflict upon another. It is perhaps only with enough distance in time passed that the line, in the eye of television viewer or the true crime reader becomes thicker, less opaque and can make them feel less involved with the memory of what took place, what lives were ruined by an act of madness, thuggery or insane thirst for revenge or power.

Murder, as a nation we seem to be preoccupied with it, engrained into the national psyche as if it were a sport, as if it were nothing but a complicated game of guess who, and it is perhaps only of late that we have moved rightfully away from the unnerving titillation that came with the Sunday newspapers and their involvement of hyping up the story, of every gruesome detail being laid bare for the reader to devour as they eat their morning meal; and looked upon the crime of seeing the victims for their humanity, rather than the faux celebrity and infamy enshrined by the killer.

The fine line between fiction and fact must not be breached, adapted arguably as sense of historical illumination, or even presented in such a way that it might aid modern detectives a sliver of hope in which to bring a killer to justice and offer closure to the family of the victim; but it must not be directly breached.

For those watching the three-part ITV drama The Pembrokeshire Murders, the sense of justice finally prevailing and the conviction of John Cooper in the brutal murders and terrorising rape of his victims is perhaps one of relief, and yet one that will urge more questions to be asked, insistence that other crimes in the area at the time be looked into with deeper scrutiny.

Mindful of the sensibilities and emotional response of those in the area and the families of those who suffered under John Cooper’s nightmarish reign of terror, the cast, crew and production team should be applauded for the sensitivity afforded and represented in the drama, that there was no suggestion of turning the drama into anything that resembled gratuitous fare, and whilst it is always difficult for an actor to step into the mind of a murderer, especially one from actual events, it is perhaps only fitting that Keith Allen, who portrays John Cooper with fear and menace, and that Luke Evans as DCI Steve Wilkins, should be so precise in their meaning and in their subtly.

The Pembrokeshire Murders will forever live in the memory of the area, but as the drama showed admirably, the man who committed these despicable crimes will be forever damned, and that the message of the show will ring true, murderers will be hunted down, no matter how long it takes, and be brought to justice.

Ian D. Hall