A twist on true crime

Until I Kill You writer Nick Stevens discusses the making of this ITV drama, his approach to dramatising true crime stories for the screen and why the series breaks the genre mould.

From Des, In Plain Sight and Little Boy Blue to White House Farm, The Long Shadow, Honour and The Pembrokeshire Murders, ITV has developed something of a reputation for true crime drama – and Nick Stevens has written two of them.

Stevens’s first effort for the UK broadcaster, 2016’s In Plain Sight, explores the crimes of serial killer Peter Manuel (played by Martin Compston), who murdered eight people between 1956 and 1958 in Lanarkshire, Scotland, and the detective on his trail, William Muncie (Douglas Henshall).

Five years later, he followed that up with The Pembrokeshire Murders. It starred Luke Evans as DS Steve Wilkins, who utilises state-of-the-art DNA technology in his hunt for serial killer John Cooper (Keith Allen) in Wales.

Stevens has now completed his own personal trilogy with the launch of four-parter Until I Kill You, which debuted on ITV last night and runs on consecutive evenings. Directed by Julia Ford, it tells the story of Delia Balmer, who survived a near-fatal relationship with murderer John Sweeney.

Set in the early 1990s, it stars Anna Maxwell Martin (Motherland, Ludwig) as Delia, who narrates the ordeal she suffered at the hands of Sweeney (Endeavour’s Shaun Evans) and her traumatic journey through the police and criminal justice system as they attempt to prosecute him for his crimes.

The series reunites Stevens with producer World Productions, which made both In Plain Sight and The Pembrokeshire Murders. But Until I Kill You offered him the chance to pen a series that places more focus on character over procedural than their previous work together.

“From a career point of view, I wanted to get away from something that was a straightforward procedural,” Steven tells DQ. “I wanted to do something that gave me more of an opportunity to demonstrate that I had some ability when it came to writing character, not just procedure.

“For all the strengths of The Pembrokeshire Murders and In Plain Sight, there weren’t massive opportunities for me to put in character that would have felt anything other than shoehorned in, to be honest, whereas this is character-driven. Obviously, there are elements of suspense and police procedure that we associate traditionally with the true crime genre, but this is unusual; it focuses on the relationship between two people, at least in the first half.”

The writer teases the uncharacteristic structure of this true crime show, which follows Delia’s first meeting with Sweeney and their initial attraction, before his artistic, anti-establishment persona reveals a darker side, leading to several violent attacks on Delia, during which he tells her he killed a former girlfriend and dumped her body in an Amsterdam canal.

Sweeney is arrested but, due to a catastrophic failure by the court to realise the danger he poses, he is granted bail. He immediately pursues Delia and subjects her to a horrific, near-fatal attack that she survives – but Sweeney evades capture and disappears.

Shattered by the trauma and injuries inflicted by Sweeney, Delia bravely seeks to rebuild her life. But when Sweeney returns seven years later and is arrested for the murder of another girlfriend in North London, her fragile recovery is shattered all over again.

What makes Until I Kill You a different proposition within the true crime genre, and what interested Stevens about Balmer’s story, is the fact it is about a victim who survived – and has since been very outspoken about her ordeal, writing the book upon which the series is based.

“I saw the book on a shelf and thought, ‘OK, well, that’s a new angle,’” he says. “I had a longing to get away from straightforward procedure. Then when I met Delia, that added a new dimension to my thinking about it and my engagement with the subject matter.

“Is there any such thing as a typical victim? No. Everybody is different. But she is very combative, which may be a consequence of her PTSD. It just made me think, what kind of experience will such a person have in the context of the criminal justice system? I found that interesting to explore.”

Maxwell Martin was equally compelled by Balmer, who Stevens says isn’t necessarily a “likeable” character in the series – something that suited the actor too.

“Anna is very vocal about not wanting to play characters who are easy to like. She and probably a lot of actors get impatient with that obsession the industry has with, ‘We must make the make this character likeable or we’re going to lose our audience,’” he says. “From my perspective, a character doesn’t need to be likeable, but they must always be compelling. I like to think that is the kind of character Delia is, and I hope also that the fact she endures so much will give her a lot of sympathy in the bank to offset the more challenging aspects of her character.”

Penning a show described as a true story but with characters and some scenes that have been added for dramatic purposes, Stevens’s chief challenge was condensing 20 years of Balmer’s life into four commercial hours of television.

“There are probably scenes in the drama where you’re jumping to something in scene two that happens a few hours or days after scene one when in reality it might be years,” the writer notes. When it comes to factual drama, “you’re trying to stay true to the important facts of the story, the characters, the people involved,” he continues, “while at the same time recognising what is necessary to make the drama compelling and propulsive. You gradually develop an instinct for what works and what doesn’t work. But compression is the trickiest thing.

“As long as I spend a lot of time on research, as long as you have a wealth of material to draw on, although there’s a lot of hacking and shaping required, you can still distil it down to something authentic and true to the spirit of the facts.”

Books have played a part in all three series written by Stevens. The one written by Wilkins that formed the basis for The Pembrokeshire Murders was “so dense with forensic detail, it was a gold mine,” he says. When it came to Balmer’s book, “its most significant contribution was just alerting me to the fact that here’s a story I would like to tell,” he says. “Because it was ghostwritten, ultimately I ended up depending on Delia’s manuscript, partly because she felt that the manuscript was a truer representation of her experience, even if it was a rougher document.”

That raw document became Stevens’s touchstone as he wrote the scripts, while his work was also aided by “hours and hours” of interviews with Balmer herself, the police involved and Balmer’s friends.

He began work writing “quite a detailed treatment,” effectively a prose version of the drama, which then is used as the catalyst for deeper discussions with the production company or the broadcaster. ITV then commissioned a pilot script and subsequently greenlit the series.

“That’s when a different process, a more intensive process, kicks in, which involves regular meetings with the development people at the production company and me spending a lot of time on my own or interviewing people,” he says. “The rest in terms of shaping the narrative, that’s just experience.”

It’s important that writers “don’t make big stuff up that didn’t happen,” he says of working on series based on true stories. But with the confidence of two successful series behind him, Stevens has learned to trust his instincts about how to bring these stories to the screen.

Another lesson is not to get lost in research. “Writers are always looking for an excuse to postpone an inevitable moment when you have to just sit down and do it,” he observes. “You have to learn to recognise that if you’re working with a production company, there’s a schedule, so that helps. Don’t get too bogged down.”

As an executive producer on Until I Kill You, Stevens has also been involved behind the scenes, working closely with director Ford, Maxwell Martin, Evans and the production team.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to acquire that status because people trust me a bit now and trust my input,” he says. “I also get involved in the auditions and the casting and all that stuff, and that’s always fascinating and exciting. But it’s somewhere around there that you know you should fuck off.”

Through production, Stevens will watch dailies from the set and offer his feedback, though he tries to avoid visiting the set. “It’s always nice to take my son and my wife along, but it’s fair to say it’s almost always horrible for a director when there’s a writer lurking,” he jokes. “There’s an indeterminate period of about two weeks to a month where you’re quite closely involved, then you’re gradually letting go and ‘bye bye.’ I’m fine with that, because it’s a collaboration and a privilege.”

While many viewers may be unfamiliar with the story behind Until I Kill You, Stevens hopes the audience will be just as compelled by the series and the electric performances from Maxwell Martin and Evans, and stick with it as the story takes a turn they might not expect.

“I want people to be compelled by this drama and be fascinated by it,” he says. “Halfway through, the imminent threat of the serial killer greatly diminishes and it becomes a different, quieter drama. I really hope people find the second half of the drama as satisfying, albeit in a different way, as the high-octane first half. I want people to stick with it to the end and be satisfied.”

tagged in: ITV, Nick Stevens, Until I Kill You, World Productions