| Writer
Peter Ransley talks about the incredible thriller why-dunnit Fallen
Angel
Peter Ransley
Writer
Peter Ransley spent nearly three years adapting Andrew Taylor’s Roth Trilogy for the small screen.
He says: The problem in adapting the story lay not so much in its length and complexity as in unifying it. The books are compulsive individual reading but for television lacked a unifying character which I then found in Wendy, Clare Holman’s character, who doesn’t appear at all in the first book and has little more than a cameo role in the second.
Seeing things through Wendy’s eyes means that from the very beginning the audience, through flashbacks, can glimpse events from Rosemary’s childhood, the meaning of which only become clear at the end of the story.
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Peter explains: One of the most popular thriller sub-genres in both novels and television has been that of the serial killer. Once we know the killer and he or she is apprehended, that is the end of the story. Yet in real life stories from which this genre has sprung – from the East End Ripper through to the Moors Murders – the public fascination not only continues, but intensifies. Every aspect of the killer’s life, background and family is put under the microscope. What makes such a person kill? Is it their upbringing or is it their nature? Is there such a thing as evil?
Fallen Angel extends the genre by rewinding, going deeper and deeper into the background of a killer.
And Peter adds: There are no cut and dried answers. This is a drama not a thesis. The forensic psychologists we’ve talked to say that for someone like Rosemary, it’s not nature or nurture that’s the cause, but a mixture of both. What the three films do dramatically show is echoed time and time again in real life cases – the family secrets, the cover-ups, the early warning signs that are missed, ignored or denied by family, friends and later by police and social workers.
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