Do you know your Ten Commandments? The sixth, which forms the title of a new four-part BBC One true-crime serial, is perhaps the most famous. “It rhymes,” a creepy, disembodied voice tells us, “with ‘thou shalt not thrill’…” Murder, then, is the sin at the heart of The Sixth Commandment, the latest drama from Sarah Phelps, best known for her Agatha Christie adaptations. This, however, is not a whodunnit, but a whydunnit.
Timothy Spall is Peter Farquhar, a newly retired schoolmaster who is turning his hand to the occasional university lecture. It is there that he meets Ben Field (Éanna Hardwicke), a student who seems unusually attentive to Peter’s needs – Peter, as Ben rapidly discovers, has struggled his entire life with the project of reconciling his Christian faith with his homosexuality. “I have to be untouched, unloved, live only a fraction of my life,” he tells his brother Ian (Adrian Rawlins) when confronted about the way that Ben has inveigled into the Farquhar nest. “Ben has brought me to life.”
