BODY COUNT (DES)

Having given us earlier this year its take on the murders carried out in 1985 by Jeremy Bamber in 'White House Farm' , ITV is back again with a drama that wades through horrific, real life crime.

'Des,' written by Luke Neal and Kelly Jones, focuses on the confession of one of Britain's most infamous serial killers, Dennis Nilsen in 1983.

Not so much a whodunnit but more of a how many did he kill, it features David Tennant as the Aberdeenshire born murderer and pits him against Daniel Mays' Detective Chief Inspector Peter Jay.

At the start of director Lewis Arnold's gripping three part miniseries, Jay is going through a painful marriage breakdown.

It is a rare glimpse of Jay's life outside the police as soon he and Barry Ward's Detective Inspector Steve McCusker are responding to reports of the discovery of human remains in a drain by Tony Watt's Dyno Rod employee Michael Crattan.

Jay and McCusker wait for Nilson to return home from work and on entering his flat immediately notice the stench of decaying human bodies.

Nilson immediately confesses to having human remains in his home and on being taken to the police station to be interviewed, casually tells Jay and McCusker he has murdered around 15 people.

What follows is a compelling and horrific story about the police's efforts to establish the whereabouts of Nilsson's victims and their identities.

Many of those murdered, Nilson nonchalantly tells them, are homeless men or drug addicts he has befriended on the streets, in fast food joints or in pubs and then took home to murder.

Nilson struggles to remember their names but provides details of their appearances.

He almost seems relieved to help.

But as the miniseries wears on, we discover Nilson is an ex-soldier and a former cop who claims he left the police because of homophobia.

He is also wily, withholding certain bits of information, like a tendency to try and drown his victims.

Jay and his team are unnerved when Nilson starts to engage Jason Watkins' biographer Brian Masters during the investigation.

As the media starts to get wind of the scale of Nilson's crimes, the investigative team also have to battle their superiors including Ron Cook's Detective Superintendent Geoff Chambers and Gerard Horan's Commander Gerald Lockwood who fret about the cost of police overtime and the reopening of a high profile missing person's case involving the Canadian student Kenneth Ockenden.

As with 'White House Farm,' Neal and Jones shine a light on the internal pressures on the investigative team and the games played by a clever, manipulative killer - particularly in court.

But it is Tennant's chilling performance that really propels the drama to among the very best of ITV's recent crop of true crime dramas.

Tennant's Nilson imparts information in such a matter of fact way that he keeps you guessing as to his true motives for doing so.

In his encounters with Masters, we realise Nilson is enjoying his notoriety and is desperate to prove how intelligent he is.

The always reliable Mays is suitably earnest and empathetic as the lead detectove and he bounces off Ward and Cook's sturdy supporting turns in particular.

An ITV true crime drama always benefits from having Jason Watkins in the cast.

With 'The Lost Honour of Christopher Jeffries' and 'The Secret' under his belt, he doesn't disappoint as Masters - bringing a degree of pomposity initially to the role of the writer and then gradually allowing it to disintegrate as he starts to see Nilson for who he really is.

There are notable supporting performances too from Jay Simpson as DS Chris Healy, Faye McKeever as the estranged wife of one missing man, Ben Bailey Smith as DC Brian Lodge and Jamie Parker and Pip Torrens as opposing barristers in the trial.

Bronagh Waugh appears as a newspaper hack and Ross Anderson and especially Laurie Kynaston impress as two men who survived separate attempts by Nilson to lure them to the deaths. 

While Tennant steals the show as Nilson, with Watkins and Mays giving him a run for his money, Neal and Jones' miniseries sensitively handles a very grisly story - mindful of the fact that in the rush to secure convictions, the families of some the victims didn't even get the chance to see him stand trial for their loved ones' murders.

Nilson was convicted of six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder but he is believed to have killed at least six other people.

His youngest victim was 14 and he was believed to have engaged in sexual acts after killing some of his victims.

It is to Neal and Jones' credit that they do not dwell on the more lurid aspects of the case.

By deploying the less is more approach, they augment the repulsive nature of Nilson's crimes by throwing us enough morsels of information to imagine what horrors befell the vulnerable men who were unfortunate to come across him.

'Des' cements ITV's place not only as the experts in recreating real life murder investigations but in doing it in the most sensitive way possible.

A story like Nilson's will always attract viewers' interest but handling it sensitively takes real guile.

Fortunately 'Des' has that in droves.

('Des' was broadcast on ITV between September 14-16, 2020)