Created by Kelly Jones and based on Carol Anne Lee’s biography, “A Fine Day for Hanging,” BritBox‘s “A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story” is a gutting, engaging historical crime drama revolving around an ambitious woman hindered by abuse, misogyny, trauma and her desire to be loved. A foreboding tale, Lucy Boynton is brilliant as Ruth Ellis, a young mother convicted of killing her abusive lover and who would become the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom.
Capital punishment is still a polarizing topic in the United States. However, the practice has been long outlawed in various places across the globe. “A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story” explores why an otherwise upstanding citizen might be driven to commit such a heinous act and how a country condemned her for it. The series opens on July 13, 1955, the day Ruth is executed for murdering race car driver and known playboy David Blakely (Laurie Davidson). Calm and composed despite her circumstances, Ruth appears steadfast as she eats her final meal of eggs and coffee. After refusing anxiety medication from the prison nurse, she dresses in a posh silk blouse and skirt, finishing her look with her signature red lipstick. Everyone around her, including the prison guards, the undertaker and even the warden, seem unsettled by what’s happening. Yet, Ruth faces her fate bravely.
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Directed by Lee Haven Jones, the first two episodes of the four-part series recount Ruth’s arrest, her ultra-speedy trial, conviction and sentencing. Just three months before her death date, on Easter Sunday 1955, Ruth, dressed in a beautiful grey overcoat, is arrested by authorities after shooting David at point-blank range. Sitting calmly in the interrogation room, she tells the detectives: “I am guilty. I’m rather confused.” Though she eventually obtains the legal counsel of defense attorney John Bickford (Toby Jones), she challenges his guidance at every turn. Committed to the alluring image that she’s carefully cultivated over the years, Ruth is initially unwilling to discuss the physical and emotional violence she endured at David’s hand. Moreover, out of a twisted sense of loyalty, she is also silent about the accomplice who helped her.
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The entire show is rapidly paced and full of information, but the second half of “A Cruel Love” is the more compelling. From jail, Ruth reflects on her and David’s tumultuous two-year relationship. When they first meet, she has a bustling career, savings, custody of her two children and a lovely apartment. Through flashbacks, the audience sees how Ruth’s fixation on David and his manipulation and terror dismantled everything Ruth had worked so hard for. The series also explores David’s co-dependent friendship with Carole (Bessie Carter) and Anthony Findlater (Ed Sayer), a married couple that weaponized their relationship with the race car driver to drive a wedge between him and Ruth.
As devastating as “A Cruel Love” is to watch, especially as Ruth endures acts of violence at the hands of several men, the show itself is stunning. The cinematography, led by Bryan Gavigan, production design by Stephen Campbell and costuming by Emma Fryer, place viewers squarely into 1950s London. While much of the world is still clinging to post-World War II conservatism, Ruth — sporting her bleached blonde curls, bold lipsticks and glamorous clothing — lives (and thrives) outside the period’s restraints.
Moving beyond Ruth, the series is even more riveting when it looks toward the societal standards of the time. A single mother who made a name for herself as a sex worker and the youngest club manager in London, Ruth is a threat to the rules of respectability. Her profession makes her a pariah in “proper” social circles and among other women. Yet men can’t help being intrigued by her, and in turn, they hate her for it. From her boss at the club to David and another suitor, Desmond (Mark Stanley) and into the detectives and judge’s treatment of her, it’s clear that Ruth’s death sentence isn’t simply a condemnation of her wrongdoings but more broadly of her desirability, perceived power and her unwillingness to conform.
What’s most devastating about “A Cruel Love” is Ruth’s willingness to defend the men who had so heartily betrayed her. More than just a reimagining of a woman’s life so callously altered and then cut short, the series reflects on some of our more heinous human practices and how those deemed undesirable and unworthy so easily get lost in courts and systems that aren’t built for them to begin with.
The first two episodes of “A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story” premiere Feb. 17 on BritBox, with new episodes airing weekly on Mondays.
