In Suspicious Circumstances

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In Suspicious Circumstances
Genre
  • True crime
Directed byvarious, inc. Ian White, Julian Farino, Richard Signy
Presented by Edward Woodward
Music byMatthew Scott
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
No. of series5
No. of episodes39
Production
Executive producer
  • Dianne Nelmes
Producer
  • Sue Durkan
Production company Granada Television
Original release
Network ITV
Release3 June 1991 (1991-06-03) 
11 October 1996 (1996-10-11)

In Suspicious Circumstances is a British true crime drama television series produced by Granada Television for ITV between 3 June 1991 and 11 October 1996. Re-enactments of historical crimes were introduced by Edward Woodward.

Granada's Head of Factual Drama Ian McBride described the show as revisiting "an atmospheric past as Edward Woodward intrigues the viewer by walking through period sets and examining the unknown quirks of a crime gone by." [1]

In 1996, several writers accused the show of plagiarism. However, Granada executives claimed that their researchers had used the same source materials as the claimants. Of the 21 claims of copyright infringement which were heard in court, four were upheld and the rest dismissed. [2]

Boxtree published a tie-in book featuring 11 true cases of infamous crimes from the 1870s to the 1980s. [3]

On 12 November 2022, Talking Pictures TV began repeating the series on Saturday evenings. [4]

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References

  1. McBride, Ian (1999). "Where are we going and how and why?". In Alan Rosenthal (ed.). Why Docudrama? Fact-fiction on Film and TV. Southern Illinois University Press. p. 112. ISBN   0809321874.
  2. Paget, Derek (2005). "Dramadoc/docudrama: The Law and Regulation". In Alan Rosenthal, John Corner (ed.). New Challenges for Documentary (2nd ed.). Manchester University Press. p. 436. ISBN   0719068991.
  3. In Suspicious Circumstances. Boxtree. 1993. ISBN   9781852834135.
  4. Dyer, Jamie (31 October 2022). "In Suspicious Circumstances Coming to Talking Pictures TV". Old Time Review. Retrieved 15 November 2022.