STAR RATING: ***** Brilliant **** Very Good *** Okay ** Poor * Awful
Jill Dando rose from humble beginnings in Weston super-mare to becoming the presenter of Crimewatch, the BBC's flagship crime reporting programme, and becoming a household name. However, it all came to a shuddering end in April 1999, when she was brutally gunned down on her doorstep, prompting a massive police investigation and massive speculation over who was behind it. Eventually, a suspect, Barry George was arrested and charged, before eventually being convicted, then sensationally exonerated after contradictory evidence emerged, leaving the case unsolved in the aftermath.
In April 1999, less than two years after the dust had started to settle over Princess Diana's death, the public consciousness was dealt another blow when Jill Dando, who bore a striking similarity to the late princess died in similarly shocking circumstances, albeit with an apparent air of criminality about it. What followed was a sensational series of events, worthy of a TV drama, and even more unbelievable than the actual event itself, but sadly left a family without any justice. Director Marcus Plowright here resurrects the prominent cold case, and does his part in keeping it in everyone's mind.
Dando was not only successful, but evidently well liked, and yet Plowright does not expand in any scope or depth on the devastating emotional impact her murder left on colleagues, friends or family, even with these people involved in the production, instead forensically focusing on the police investigation, from the Serbian links involving the ongoing Kosovan war at the time, to the shaky police pursuit of George, focusing more on his eccentricity rather than anything truly solid, resulting in an unusually succinct three part Netflix production.
Nearly a quarter of a century on, it's staggering that such a high profile case still remains unsolved, and that such a shambolic original investigation went without much in the way of reprimand. It inevitably led to a flurry of conspiracy theories (most notably a Jimmy Savile related one), which is one of many things this potentially interesting documentary could have gone into in more depth. ***
Jill Dando rose from humble beginnings in Weston super-mare to becoming the presenter of Crimewatch, the BBC's flagship crime reporting programme, and becoming a household name. However, it all came to a shuddering end in April 1999, when she was brutally gunned down on her doorstep, prompting a massive police investigation and massive speculation over who was behind it. Eventually, a suspect, Barry George was arrested and charged, before eventually being convicted, then sensationally exonerated after contradictory evidence emerged, leaving the case unsolved in the aftermath.
In April 1999, less than two years after the dust had started to settle over Princess Diana's death, the public consciousness was dealt another blow when Jill Dando, who bore a striking similarity to the late princess died in similarly shocking circumstances, albeit with an apparent air of criminality about it. What followed was a sensational series of events, worthy of a TV drama, and even more unbelievable than the actual event itself, but sadly left a family without any justice. Director Marcus Plowright here resurrects the prominent cold case, and does his part in keeping it in everyone's mind.
Dando was not only successful, but evidently well liked, and yet Plowright does not expand in any scope or depth on the devastating emotional impact her murder left on colleagues, friends or family, even with these people involved in the production, instead forensically focusing on the police investigation, from the Serbian links involving the ongoing Kosovan war at the time, to the shaky police pursuit of George, focusing more on his eccentricity rather than anything truly solid, resulting in an unusually succinct three part Netflix production.
Nearly a quarter of a century on, it's staggering that such a high profile case still remains unsolved, and that such a shambolic original investigation went without much in the way of reprimand. It inevitably led to a flurry of conspiracy theories (most notably a Jimmy Savile related one), which is one of many things this potentially interesting documentary could have gone into in more depth. ***