There are not many TV dramas that people still talk about in hushed, almost reverential tones more than a decade after they aired. Red Riding is one of them. The three-part Yorkshire crime series, adapted from David Peace’s raw and uncompromising quartet of novels, remains one of the most powerful pieces of television ever made in England. And the story of how it came together is almost as fascinating as the drama itself.
It started with a phone call, more or less. Screenwriter Tony Grisoni had been working with director Michael Winterbottom when producer Andrew Eaton put a set of books in front of him back in 2006. The novels were by David Peace, a writer known for dragging the darkest corners of recent history into the light. The first book, 1974, hit Grisoni hard. “I was drawn to it and repelled at the same time,” he has said. “It was strong meat, full of anger and injustice.”
That tension, being pulled in while wanting to look away, is exactly what makes Red Riding so compelling. The story is rooted in real events that shook Yorkshire and the wider country. The crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, hang over the whole thing like a dark cloud. So does the case of Stefan Kiszko, the man wrongly convicted of murdering 11-year-old Lesley Molseed in 1975, who spent 16 years in prison for something he did not do. Peace described his work as “fiction torn from the facts,” and that description fits perfectly.
The adaptation eventually became three films rather than a traditional TV series, each directed by a different filmmaker. Julian Jarrold took on 1974, James Marsh directed 1980, and Anand Tucker handled 1983. The decision to bring in three directors gave each part its own visual identity while keeping the story connected. It was an unusual approach, and it paid off.
The cast was equally impressive. Andrew Garfield appeared in 1974 before his career went stratospheric. Sean Bean, Rebecca Hall, Paddy Considine, and Mark Addy all featured across the trilogy. These were not small names being asked to do a quiet regional drama. These were serious actors drawn to serious material.
Filming in Yorkshire brought its own challenges. The production team was committed to showing the county as it really was during those years, which meant grim streets, decay, and a sense of post-industrial bleakness that was far from the tourist board version of God’s Own County. Locals were not always thrilled. Stories circulated about residents asking whether the crew could perhaps add a floral arrangement to balance out the burnt-out cars and upturned shopping trolleys that dressed the sets. The answer, essentially, was no.
That commitment to authenticity is a big part of why Red Riding still resonates. It does not flinch. It shows corruption inside the police force, the failure of institutions to protect ordinary people, and the way that power can be abused with very little consequence. Watching it now, in an era when public trust in institutions has taken repeated hits, it feels almost prophetic.
The series aired on Channel 4 in 2009 to widespread critical acclaim. Comparisons to The Wire and even The Godfather were thrown around, which might sound like hyperbole but did not feel entirely out of place. What Peace had written, and what the filmmakers had translated to screen, was a genuine attempt to reckon with a specific place and time in English history. Not to exploit it, but to understand it.
David Peace himself grew up in Ossett, West Yorkshire, and the landscape of his childhood is all over these books and the films that followed. There is a personal anger driving the work, a sense that what happened in Yorkshire during the 1970s and 1980s deserved to be examined honestly rather than tidied up or forgotten.
For viewers who have never seen Red Riding, it is worth approaching with some preparation. This is not comfortable viewing. The violence is brutal, the moral landscape is murky, and there is very little in the way of reassurance or easy resolution. But that is also what makes it essential. It is one of those rare pieces of drama that treats its audience as adults and trusts them to sit with difficult material.
England has produced a lot of crime drama over the years, some of it excellent, much of it fairly forgettable. Red Riding sits in a category almost by itself. Fifteen years on, it has lost none of its power.