All love stories have moments of exquisite lightness. In the first episode of BBC One’s The Sixth Commandment, Peter (Timothy Spall) and Ben (Éanna Hardwicke) climb up to a hilltop. Panting and squinting into the sun, they tell each other they love each other for the first time. Unable to contain his happiness, Peter throws his arms around Ben, who lifts him up off the ground so his feet dangle just above the grass. The two men cling to each other. But this is no ordinary love story – it’s the tragic, true case of a lonely man who was murdered by the very person he thought he would share the rest of his life with.
The Sixth Commandment tells the real story of how the meeting of a cherished teacher, Peter Farquhar, and a charming, erudite young student, Ben Field, set in motion one of the strangest, most chilling criminal cases in recent memory. In the early 2010s, churchwarden Field started a campaign of harassment, disguised as love, against Farquhar, a devout Christian who was four decades his senior. Field tricked Farquhar, who had struggled with his sexuality his whole life, into a relationship, and exploited his craving for companionship, becoming the sole beneficiary of his will. Over the course of several years, he drugged him with hallucinogens and encouraged him to drink alcohol. The combined effect made Farquhar think he was losing his mind.
