“It was a skilful, enraging piece of television”
“Andrew Malkinson’s calm dignity in this excellent documentary was remarkable given the horrors he has suffered at the hands of the state. He must have felt he was in a Kafkaesque nightmare. It was a skilful, enraging piece of television.”
Carol Midgely, The Times
“A timeline graphic was a simple but effective storytelling tool, marking the passing of the years. Malkinson, an articulate man, spoke with a quiet fury about his ordeal. His descriptions of life behind bars were powerful, from the fear of fellow prisoners to the hopelessness of his Catch-22 situation, whereby maintaining his innocence and refusing to take rehabilitation courses meant that the Parole Board considered him to be ‘in denial’ and unsuitable for release.”
Anita Singh, The Telegraph
“There are numerous TV documentaries about the police clearing up cold cases with the help of advances in DNA profiling. But The Wrong Man proves that seemingly foolproof DNA evidence can be ignored, accidentally destroyed – or perhaps, even worse, deliberately disposed of. The wider context of Malkinson’s case was missing from the film. How many other wrongful convictions have Appeal helped overturn? How many such miscarriage of justice have been recorded in, say, the past 20 years? Nevertheless, this case is a frightening example of the fallibility of the British justice system, and I hope lessons really have been learned.”
Gerard Gilbert, The i
“There are a few niggling gaps in the narrative of this documentary that will prompt immediate supplementary Googling by savvy, true-crime-schooled viewers – did he have an alibi, for instance? But what The Wrong Man does that internet search engines never could is provide an enormously affecting account of Malkinson’s post-release, pre-exoneration limbo. I wasn’t expecting to sob at the sight of a middle-aged man driving a borrowed Fiat Panda up a dirt track but, as part of awyer Emily Bolton’s attempts to rehabilitate Malkinson after his release, it is an extraordinarily emotional moment.”
Rachel Aroesti, The Guardian
No comments yet