Annesley Woodhouse, the Nottinghamshire village where James Graham grew up, was twice swamped by hordes of police and media. The dramatist was a baby the first time, during the miners’ strike of 1984-5. But on the second occasion, in 2004, he was just back from Hull University when an ex-miner, Keith Frogson, was murdered. “In those first moments,” says Graham, “the police were terrified that someone was killing for reasons going back to the strike.”
When another villager – Chanel Taylor – was killed, the case became even more complicated, bringing further waves of police to the scene. Fascinated by the psychology of officers returning to a community where they were widely reviled for their actions during the strike, Graham has fictionalised the double trouble into Sherwood, a six-part BBC drama. Viewers led by the title to expect something about Robin Hood are not completely wrong: a crossbow was one of the murder weapons, and the vast verdant canopy of Sherwood Forest became the location of one of the biggest manhunts in UK history.
