Ruth Ellis was the last woman executed in Great Britain; what’s surprising is that her execution happened only 70 years ago, in 1955. In fact, between the time she admitted to killing her lover, David Blakley and the day she was executed was an astonishingly brief 3 months. BritBox has a scripted retelling of Ellis’ story.
A CRUEL LOVE: THE RUTH ELLIS STORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A fish swims in a bowl. A woman sits at a table, and hears a lock unlock. She’s presented a tray of food. “Holloway Prison, 13th July 1955.”
The Gist: The woman is Ruth Ellis (Lucy Boynton), and she is eating her last meal, on her way to being hanged. Only three months earlier — Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955 — she shot her lover, race car driver David Blakley (Laurie Davidson) to death outside a London pub. As we see her put makeup on in preparation for her execution, we see shots of her holding a gun and shooting Blakley, putting multiple rounds in him in front of witnesses.
When she’s brought in and questioned, Ruth fully admits to killing Blakley, with a gun that she had stored in her flat for three years. She seems to be very matter-of-fact about the probability that if she pleads guilty, she’ll be executed.
A few years earlier, we see Ruth go in for an interview with the owner of the Little Club in Knightsbridge; she is looking to go from a nightclub hostess to a manager, and she impresses the owner with her knowledge of who to give a seat first based on whose spending will be looser. As she celebrates the new job with her friend, she’s joined by her two children, Andre (Sidney Jackson) and Georgina (Raye Cooper). She’s approached by a man named Desmond Cussen (Mark Stanley), who knew her at her old club. The divorced mom invites the shy but nice guy for a drink, which is where she literally runs into Blakley for the first time.
As she starts her job at the Little Club, she decides to dye her hair platinum blonde, and both Blakley and Cussen show up; Cussen is there to get to know her better, but Blakley barely recognized her from the last encounter. Still, there is chemistry there, and things move fast with Blakley, much to the consternation of Cussen and everyone else in her life.
In jail, she meets with John Bickford (Toby Jones), a solicitor that was paid to defend her. He’s astonished that she signed a confession without attorney advice, and wants to get to the bottom of who gave her that gun. He also doesn’t buy her pedestrian reasons for shooting Blakley in front of a crowd. As he presses, he finds out from Ruth’s friends and family that Blakley beat her, and she lost a baby because of it.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Kelly Jones and based on Ellis’ true story as told in the book A Fine Day For Hanging: The Real Ruth Ellis Story by Carol Ann Lee, A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story has a similar feel to another recent BritBox true crime series, Joan, even though the time periods of the two shows are very different.
Our Take: What struck us most while watching the first episode of A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story is the coldly efficient performance by Boynton as Ellis. Here is a woman who kills a man and fully admits to it, even accepting the fact that she might die because of it. There’s something otherworldly and strange in how she accepts her fate, which makes us think there is another motivation underneath what she did. Why would she or anyone be so willing to admit to killing someone, knowing it might get them the astoundingly quick execution that Ellis received?
That was one of the things that left us scratching our heads a little bit. We see very little of Ruth’s life before she got her job managing The Little Club, and we only get hints of the difficulties she’s had — she was separated from her daughter’s father and her son’s father died in WWII. She’s seen abuse in her life since she was a child, whether it was perpetrated on her or on people she loved. All of that goes into why she not only did what she did to Blakley but why she freely admitted to it.
But we’re coming from the perspective that her solicitor, John Bickford, comes from, uncovering all of this history without any help from Ruth herself. We get what Kelly Jones might be doing with this kind of storytelling; we need to be as confused about Ruth as Bickford is, so we can be surprised by her history and layers as he uncovers the abuses she’s suffered at the hands of Blakley and most of the other men in her life.
One thing we hope gets explained is the rapid time frame between Ruth’s April confession and her July execution. We’ve never heard of an execution happening that quickly, given the fact that Death Row inmates tend to appeal their sentences for years on end, as well as attempt to get clemency from the state. Perhaps here, nothing of the sort was attempted. Was that at Ruth’s request, her family’s, or Bickford’s? And what role does Cussen play in all this? Ruth tells Bickford that Cussen is the one who gave her the gun three years prior, but wants his name out of the trial and any other court proceedings. Why that is isn’t clear, but then again we have three years of history to keep going back to as Ruth goes on trial then waits to be executed.
Sex and Skin: Blakley and Ruth have sex soon after they meet, but not much skin is shown.
Parting Shot: Cussen looks on as Ruth is put in a police car after pleading not guilty at her arraignment.
Sleeper Star: Mark Stanley is both creepy and sincere as Desmond Cussen, a hard combo to pull off.
Most Pilot-y Line: Ruth blows off Cussen to go with Blakley to a gathering in the country; Cussen walks up with flowers just as Ruth and Blakley drive off. He almost looks like he is going to hang his head like Charlie Brown at that point.
Our Call: STREAM IT. While we wish there was a bit more of Ruth Ellis’ backstory at the beginning of A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, it’s still an intriguing story about the last woman executed in Great Britain, with a fine lead performance by Lucy Boynton.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story’ On BritBox, A Drama About The Last Woman To Be Executed In Great Britain appeared first on Decider.
