Manhunt is a dramatisation of the hunt for the real-life murder of Amelie de la Grange on London's Twickenham Green in 2004. If I didn't know that the events which took place in Manhunt were real history, I'd still have been impressed by the production. We've all seen a load of police procedurals before, but I've never seen one that felt so true before, probably because the drama is derived from the memoirs of the detective who led the investigation. The process, then, is surely as close to what really happened, the behaviour of officers and the unfolding of the investigation as true as possible.
The cast did an excellent job of portraying people who felt real, the dialogue didn't come across as being overly affected or dramatised. Yet it gripped me throughout. Martin Clunes, in particular, shone as the down-to-earth, no-nonsense DCI Colin Sutton; a million miles away from his very well known Doc Martin persona. I hope the same level of dramatic tension and immersion in the story is maintained through the other episodes, but hats off to the production team for the first installment in any case.
