The Sixth Commandment writer Sarah Phelps has reacted to a horrifying reveal in the final episode.
On Tuesday (25 July), BBC One broadcast the fourth and final instalment of the true-crime series, which depicts the true story of Ben Field, a young student who gaslit two neighbours, and murdered one.
Field’s crimes were shown in the first two episodes, with Timothy Spall playing teacher and academic Peter Farquhar, who in the early 2010s was tricked into thinking Field (played by Éanna Hardwicke) was in love with him. Anne Reid played retired headteacher Ann Moore-Martin (Anne Reid), who Field also duped into a relationship in an attempt to steal her money,
While Moore-Martin survived the ordeal, Farquhar, who Field drugged with hallucinogens and sleeping tablets, was eventually killed in 2015 after Field made it look like he had drunk himself to death.
The final episode depicts the court case, which came about following an investigation into Field generated by a tip-off from Moore-Martin’s suspicious niece, Ann-Marie (Annabel Scholey).
During the trial scenes, lead prosecutor Oliver Saxby QC (Rick Warden) says: “Let’s look at the evening of Peter’s death. Your case, your account of it, is that Peter drank half a bottle of very strong whiskey. That’s your case. Had you slipped him something? You had in the past dosed him with eight times the normal amount of the sleeping tablet he’d been prescribed... eight times the amount.”
Hammering the devastating detail home, Phelps wrote on Twitter as the episode aired: “Eight times the amount. 8 times the amount. Imagine that. Imagine.”
She also defended the show’s depiction of press photographers, who hounded Moore-Martin’s family, after a complaint from Daily Mirror’s Ian Vogler, who called it “a basic lack of understanding of how we work”.
While Phelps acknowlegded that The Mirror “was not mentioned when the doorstepping, phone calls and harassment was discussed with me”, she stated: “OK so talk to ur colleagues who did exactly this. The Blake family suffered monstrous intrusion & unrelenting harassment, terrifying them & causing appalling distress. Even the prurience of the questions in this scene is based entirely on witness evidence.”
Éanna Hardwicke as Ben Field in ‘The Sixth Commandment’— (BBC)
Each episode of the series begins with the disclaimer: “This is a true story. What follows is based on extensive research, interviews and published accounts, with some scenes created for dramatic purposes.”
The Sixth Commandment is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
