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me I mean that as the highest praise when I say that Des, ITV’s three-part dramatization of Dennis Nilsen’s crimes, is absolutely horrible. There is an almost visible miasma that surrounds every scene, for three nights this week. From evil, from sadness, from sad loss and from terrible unwanted knowledge. The first episode begins in 1983, the year Nilsen was captured (if not too active an expression for what the police actually did) with news footage of the 80s homeless crisis, among whose victims Nilsen found most of his.
The police are called to a few floors whose drains have been blocked by what appears, and is soon incontrovertibly proven, human remains. We will later find out that Nilsen (known as Des by his co-workers and friends like him) called himself to report the drains. We are left to reason why, as the drama unfolds, it in particular never fails to treat its audience as capable of nuanced, critical thinking. When the owner of the upper floor returns home after work, he lets the police into his house. Stinks. DCI Peter Jay (Daniel Mays) asks where the rest of the body is. “It’s in the closet,” Nilsen says kindly. And so begins the infamous case, which became notorious not only for the number of people Nilsen killed, undetected, over a five-year period (at least a dozen), but for his treatment of the bodies thereafter. : bathe and dress them, pose them in armchairs, chatting with them, before dismembering the corpses and burning them or flushing the pieces down the toilet.
David Tennant plays Nilsen, in further confirmation that we are now safe from the actor’s manic phase, characterized by Doctor Who and DI Alec Hardy in Broadchurch (both flashy and, although it seemed like only I was concerned about this, a little saliva -fluent performances), and in quieter and more attractive roles. If he didn’t achieve the heightened evil of antihero Kilgrave in Jessica Jones, he found his groove portraying the everyday horrors hidden in common men in Deadwater Fell (as a coercive controlling husband) and Criminal (as accused by a doctor of sexually assaulting and murdering his stepdaughter. Teen). Both, it now seems, were stepping stones to this brilliantly controlled, low-key yet commanding performance as the perfectly ordinary, peer-valued union leader, monstrous narcissist, and serial killer Nilsen. Mays compares him in dexterity to the increasingly dismayed and broken cop in charge of the investigation, doing his duty no matter how much it leads to the mud. They are generous performances, which do not take center stage when they appear together and create something even greater than the sum of their parts.
Jason Watkins appears as writer Brian Masters, whose biography of Nilsen (Killing for Company) is based on the drama, providing an additional point of view beyond that of Nilsen and the police. Considering its origins, his is a slightly endorsed and unconvincing part; I think it’s there to make the point clear that there is a justification for delving into the mind and deeds of a murderer, but it is one that the drama greatly enhances on its own.
It does so by showing us the relentlessly bleak reality of it all. From the sober and lonely life of Nilsen; of the infinite vulnerabilities of boys and men that he exploited so ruthlessly; of media attention (in later episodes) that seized upon the most sordid details and further poisoned an already toxic horror with homophobia; the slow and painstaking work of gathering evidence and solving identities; from the political and financial concerns of the higher ups that endlessly undermine justice in the real and unjust world.
The first episode covers the discovery and arrest of Nilsen while giving them trickle-down information to keep their attention, the second covers preparation for the charge, and the third covers the trial and verdict. Everything remains defiant and unglamorous, always aware of the banality and corruption of the soul that caused it. It’s rare to see a drama about a serial killer that leaves you with the feeling that a service has been rendered to the victims. In the end, perhaps the highest praise that can be given to this sensitive and finely crafted piece is that Nilsen himself, while an attention-seeking narcissist, surely would have hated it.
