Red Riding
Red Riding is a British crime drama limited series written by Tony Grisoni and based on the book series of the same name by David Peace. The series comprises the novels Nineteen Seventy-Four, Nineteen Seventy-Seven, Nineteen Eighty and Nineteen Eighty-Three, and the first, third, and fourth of these novels became three feature-length television episodes, Red Riding 1974, Red Riding 1980 and Red Riding 1983. They aired in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 beginning on 5 March 2009. The three episodes were released theatrically in the United States between 5 and 11 February 2010, by IFC Films.
The second and third episode of the series uses fictionalized accounts of the investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper, a serial killer who stalked the Yorkshire area of England in the 1970s and 1980s. The name of the series is a reference to the murders and to their location, the historic county of Yorkshire being traditionally divided into three areas known as ridings.
Overview
The events take place between 1974 and 1983 and are set partially against the background of the Yorkshire Ripper killings. Set in Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, and the rest of West Yorkshire, both books and films follow several recurring fictional characters through a bleak and violent world of police corruption and organised crime. The novels and television versions blend elements of fact, fiction, and conspiracy theory into a confection dubbed "Yorkshire Noir" by some critics. They offer a chronologically fractured narrative and do not present neat resolutions.Plot summaries
''Red Riding 1974''
1974. Eddie Dunford, a cocky and naïve cub reporter for The Yorkshire Post, attends a press conference led by D.Supt Maurice Jobson regarding the disappearance of ten-year-old Clare Kemplay. Dunford learns about two earlier child disappearances: Susan Ridyard in 1969, and Jeanette Garland in 1972. Suspecting a connection, dismissing police suspicions of Gypsies, and spurred on by his friend and colleague Barry Gannon, he decides to investigate further.An anonymous caller informs Dunford of an attack on a Gypsy camp near Hunslet. A meeting between Dunford and DCS Bill Molloy is marked by mutual dislike.
Clare Kemplay is found murdered on a property belonging to John Dawson, an unscrupulous local real estate developer. Dawson plans to build a shopping centre, using a combination of bribery and blackmail on local councillors and the newly formed West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police to secure land purchases and zoning approval.
Clare Kemplay's autopsy reveals that she was tortured, raped and strangled, and her killer stitched swan wings to her body. Gannon dies in an apparent freak accident, shortly after being warned of danger to his life by Dawson's unstable wife Marjorie. An elusive male prostitute named B. J. gives Dunford incriminating material gathered by Gannon about local officials. While investigating Gannon's death, Dunford believes he has found an ally in young Sgt. Bob Fraser.
Dunford visits Jeanette Garland's mother Paula, whose husband had died by suicide due to their daughter's disappearance. This visit costs Dunford a beating from corrupt WYMP officers Tommy Douglas and Bob Craven, but Paula insists she had not alerted them.
Throwing caution to the wind, Dunford becomes romantically involved with Paula and ignores the officers' threats. He visits Marjorie Dawson in the nursing home where she recovers from the breakdown she had after speaking to Gannon. She hints at more crimes by her husband but is interrupted by Craven and Douglas, who beat Dunford severely and break his hand with a car door.
A Fitzwilliam local of half-Polish descent, Michael Myshkin, is arrested on suspicion for the Kemplay murder. It becomes obvious that Myshkin has a learning disability, barely speaks English and is given cues from the police. He implores his innocence, stating "t was the wolf. Under those beautiful carpets", but later, while in custody, confesses to murdering Kemplay, Garland and Ridyard.
Dawson approaches Dunford, feigning respect for Gannon, but drops his friendly façade and becomes aggressive when Dunford refuses a bribe. Dawson tacitly admits to having ordered Gannon's murder, the beatings on Dunford and the arson by the WYMP on the Roma camp in his land. Dunford learns that Paula is sexually involved with Dawson, whom she has known all her life.
Dunford knows Myshkin is innocent, but realises he is in over his head. He convinces Paula to escape Yorkshire with him, then briefly leaves to deliver Gannon's documents to Bob Fraser. Finding Paula missing upon his return, he storms a party in Dawson's palatial home looking for her. He is overpowered and arrested while Marjorie, echoing Myshkin's words, asks him to "tell them about the others, beneath the beautiful new carpets".
Dunford is physically and psychologically tortured by the police officers. Molloy shows him Paula's dead body and suggests the implication that Dawson killed her. The officer Dunford had trusted, Fraser, hands the Gannon documents to Jobson, who burns them at Molloy's behest. After torturing Dunford, Douglas and Craven give him a loaded handgun, obliquely stating that they need "a little favour" from him.
Bloody and frantic, Dunford heads to Dawson's private headquarters at the Karachi Club. He repeatedly pistol-whips Craven, shoots Douglas and Dawson's bodyguard, and questions the businessman at gunpoint while his unhinged wife mutters "the wolf does for John", again echoing Myshkin's cryptic statements. Dawson concedes that he is "no angel" and has "a private weakness", implying his connection to the child murders. Dunford shoots Dawson dead and flees in his car. Finding himself chased by police cars, he reverses course and deliberately drives towards them. A vision of Paula appears to him before his death in the ensuing collision.
''Red Riding 1980''
In 1980, following public outcry over the failure to catch the Yorkshire Ripper, a "squeaky clean" Manchester police detective, Assistant Chief Constable Peter Hunter, is assigned to travel to West Yorkshire to head the WYMP investigation, much to the chagrin of the former head, Bill Molloy. Hunter had previously worked on the Karachi Club massacre, a case he had to abandon due to his wife Joan's miscarriage. A member of Hunter's picked team is Helen Marshall, his former adulterous lover. The other member is Detective Chief Superintendent John Nolan, who knows the WYMP officers well. The two cases – massacre and serial killings – are linked by Bob Craven, who behaves in an openly hostile manner to the new team. Hunter correctly deduces that the Ripper inquiry is being side-tracked by the Wearside Jack tapes, and feels that the real Ripper has been interviewed and missed.Hunter suspects that one of the Ripper's supposed victims, Clare Strachan, was not a Ripper victim. Given the different types of injuries she displayed, she had not been linked to the other victims until a letter was sent, allegedly by the Ripper, to Molloy and the press claiming responsibility for her murder. Hunter receives information from B. J., who is introduced through Reverend Martin Laws. B. J., who was Strachan's close friend, claims that she was a prostitute working for Eric Hall, a WYMP policeman. Hall's wife requests that Hunter meet her, and after visiting her house – where Laws is also present – she provides proof of Hall's work as a pimp and pornographer. She confirms that Hall was a suspect in the Strachan case until the letter turned up. She also mentions that he was convinced that Strachan was not a Ripper victim, and posits that he was killed as a result. She says she had given Hall's documents to Jobson, but the latter claims to have lost the files. Meanwhile, the former affair between Hunter and Marshall threatens to reignite.
Hunter interrogates Detective Inspectors Dick Alderman and Jim Prentice. Alderman lets slip that the Strachan murder was probably committed by Hall, covered-up to look like a Ripper murder. Hunter also visits the now debilitated Tommy Douglas who later phones him demanding that they meet at his house. Hunter arrives to find Douglas and his daughter killed. Hunter is seriously intimidated when he receives covertly taken photos of himself and Marshall in compromising positions. Their burgeoning affair is cut short when she reveals that she had fallen pregnant and Reverend Laws helped her have an abortion.
Near the end of Hunter's Christmas holiday, his Manchester house is burned down. Hunter then learns that his superiors have taken him off the Ripper case due to unspecified allegations of disciplinary breaches. He returns to West Yorkshire for a scheduled meeting with Jobson, but it appears, amid great fanfare, that the Yorkshire Ripper has been captured. The suspect confesses to all murders except that of Strachan, which he denies.
Hunter tracks down B. J., who finally reveals the entire timeline of the Karachi Club massacre, that masked policemen burst in shortly after Eddie Dunford's revenge on Dawson, killing all civilian witnesses and finding Bob Craven and Tommy Douglas wounded by Eddie. Strachan was a barmaid at the club; she and her friend B. J. witnessed everything while hiding behind the bar, and were spotted by Chief Constable Harold Angus and Craven as they fled the premises. B. J. is the only surviving witness to the Karachi Club massacre, which forces him to flee town. B. J. also implies that Craven was the murderer of Strachan.
Hunter meets John Nolan in Millgarth Station, Leeds, to reveal this new information. Nolan takes Hunter downstairs to the cells where Hunter finds Craven slouched back in a chair, shot through his head. He realises that Nolan was one of the five who took part in the Karachi Club shootings and Nolan quickly shoots him dead. Alderman and Prentice plant the gun, along with another, to make it look like Hunter and Craven shot each other. In a final scene, Joan Hunter is comforted by Reverend Laws at her husband's graveside.