Latest news with #Suspect:theShootingof
The Herald Scotland
29-04-2025
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Disney+ Suspect: Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes review
Alison Rowat *** July 7, 2005. A glorious summer's day. World leaders had gathered at Gleneagles for the G8 Summit, hosted by Prime Minister Tony Blair. A 'ring of steel' had been thrown around the site. But the real threat was 360 miles away in London, where suicide bombers were preparing to unleash carnage on a scale not seen since the Second World War. First reports said a 'power surge' had knocked out the Tube. No one believed it. The summit was forgotten in favour of trying to get through to loved ones in London that day. Panic set in, but what was happening at Gleneagles was nothing compared to the sheer terror visited on London that day. To watch the four-part Disney+ drama Suspect: the Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, was to be taken back to that day. Writer Jeff Pope began conventionally enough with the hours immediately after the bombs went off. We saw investigators sifting through a bombed carriage, the first meetings between the Metropolitan Police and ministers, the confusion on the ground, the sheer chaos. It was 15 minutes, an age in screen time, before we were finally and briefly introduced to the drama's subject, Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician wrongly shot dead by police weeks later. It was a worrying sign that the drama lacked focus, and so it proved. The first two hours were largely taken up with the stories of the bombers. But the point of this drama, or so it seemed, was to throw much-needed light on how police came to kill an innocent man, and how they responded when taken to task for it. That lack of transparency and accountability, as is now known, did not end with Mr de Menezes. Pope, the writer of Philomena and Little Boy Blue, has a real talent for combining the personal and political. Yet after four hours, I felt I knew little to nothing about Mr Menezes. He was an ordinary young guy to whom an extraordinarily dreadful thing happened. But surely there was more to say about him and his family than what was crammed into the drama's final acts. In the end we learned more about senior police officers Cressida Dick, Brian Paddick and Ian Blair (played by Emily Mortimer, Russell Tovey, Conleth Hill) than we did about Mr de Menezes (Edison Alcaide). Mortimer and co turn in reliably decent performances, with Sir Ian Blair coming across as a man with a gift for opening his mouth and putting both feet in. Dick seemed officialdom personified, refusing to say she did anything wrong. Paddick emerged as the best of the police bunch, the officer who tried to do the right thing but was frustrated at every turn. To its credit, Pope's drama does at least press home the headline truths and lies about the shooting. Mr de Menezes did not leap the ticket barrier. He was not wearing a bulky jacket. He did not move towards police. And no warning was shouted. No matter the fear and confusion on the day, those are the facts.
The Guardian
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jean Charles de Menezes's mother says ‘everyone should watch' TV drama about his killing
The mother of a man shot dead by police in a London Underground station after being mistaken for a terrorist has said 'everyone should watch' a new dramatisation of her son's killing. Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times by two police marksmen in Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005. De Menezes was wrongly identified as one of the fugitives involved in a failed bombing two weeks after the 7/7 attack in London, which killed 52 people. Would-be suicide bombers had targeted the London Underground on 21 July but their devices failed to explode. De Menezes, a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, was mistaken for one of the suspects because they were linked to the same block of flats. No officers were ever prosecuted for the killing but the Metropolitan police was fined for breaching health and safety laws. The officer in charge of the botched operation was Cressida Dick, who became Metropolitan police commissioner in 2017. The fatal shooting is the subject of a new four-part Disney+ drama starring Line of Duty's Daniel Mays and Being Human's Russell Tovey, airing on 30 April. Speaking in London at a preview screening, De Menezes's mother, Maria de Menezes, recalled the moment she learned of her son's death nearly 20 years ago. 'I was not expecting that moment,' she said. 'It was terrible and then I started to shake. I sort of died then too.' Of the new series, Suspect: the Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, she said: 'In my opinion, I think everyone should watch it.' Jeff Pope, the writer and executive director of the drama, said De Menezes's mother had felt ill for three days after watching the show. He said: 'I genuinely believe from being in the room that day with her, they've been waiting 20 years for this. I honestly think that. It's just eaten away at them.' Pope added: 'Lessons have already been learned but we needed that 20 years ago. His family needed that 20 years ago. There's such an appetite for audiences in the UK for this type of piece. I just think we like to get angry. We don't like being told something that we know or sense doesn't seem right.' Kwadjo Dajan, a Bafta-winning producer who worked on the show, highlighted the power of television drama to inform and enrage audiences, citing the success of ITV's Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Netflix's Adolescence. 'I think drama makes it more relatable, you can feel the emotions, you can feel what happened. I think it gets under your skin in a way that you can put yourself in that position. It's one thing to read and learn about facts, but it's another to actually see it and feel it and experience it and I think that's the power of drama.' Russell Tovey, who plays a deputy assistant Met commissioner, added: 'Drama has the ability to penetrate into everybody's living room and that is what we have to keep doing.' A Metropolitan police spokesperson said: 'The shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes is a matter of very deep regret to the Metropolitan police service. Our thoughts remain with his family and we reiterate our apology to them.'
