New Ripper drama The Long Shadow ignores serial killer to focus on victims

10 September 2023 , 23:01

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The Long Shadow focuses on the Ripper's victims and their grieving families - as opposed to the beast himself (Image: PA)

The writer of a new series about serial killer Peter Sutcliffe was adamant the drama would focus on the 13 victims after hearing the harrowing tales of their families.

So much so, the Yorkshire Ripper does not make an appearance until the final two episodes of the seven-part series. The Long Shadow screenwriter George Kay said: “We started by calling it The Yorkshire Ripper when we announced it. We hadn’t learnt that that moniker that people used to describe Peter Sutcliffe was disrespectful in many ways and especially to the victims’ families. That was one of our lessons. We’ve been working on this for four years and in that time we’ve heard lots of things, met lots of people in this story.”

Sutcliffe carried out his campaign of terror on women between 1975 and 1980 eventually dying in Broadmoor Hospital aged 74. Katherine Kelly, who plays victim Emily Jackson, grilled her own family members about that time in Yorkshire’s history.

Katherine Kelly as Emily Jackson in The Long Shadow (ITV)

The former Corrie actress, who grew up in Yorkshire, said: “When you’re from that area, you grow up in foreknowledge of those five years of terror. It still lives within those people who lived through that time, it changed everything. And it was indeed a long shadow, there was nobody that wasn’t touched by that period of time.

“There were no mobile phones. My partner talks about how you went and you met women from the bus. And so if a woman was 10 minutes late for work, it was panic. It wasn’t ‘Oh, she’s missed the bus’. It was ‘right, where is she?’ and that left a scar on the landscape, which I grew up in full knowledge of.”

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Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe does not feature in the new drama until the penultimate episode (SWNS)

Due to money problems, Emily agreed to start doing sex work in 1975. A few weeks later she was outside the Gaiety pub, while her husband, Sydney, was inside, when Sutcliffe picked her up and killed her, stabbing her 52 times.

Daniel Mays met Emily’s real life son Neil to research for his part as Sydney. Daniel said: “I was incredibly moved by their plight. I was just really kind of compelled by the marriage and their relationship.”

• The Long Shadow will be screened on ITV and ITVX later this month.

Mark Jefferies