While it’s still frequently hard to escape the feeling that the world is designed around the whims of rich, careless, selfish, white men, this was even more emphatically the case in 1955. As ITV’s new drama A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story suggests, men held the cards – whether they were trying to exploit you, save you, get you drunk, get you into bed, prosecute you or defend you. And it was in this context that nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis, mired in an abusive relationship and struggling with at least a couple more, shot her lover David Blakely dead outside The Magdala Tavern in Hampstead and became the last British woman to face execution.
In some ways, this four-part dramatisation of these events is a tough sell. Viewing the story through modern eyes, you’ll find it impossible not to sympathise with many elements of Ellis’s situation, ponder the fairness of the verdict delivered against her, and shudder at the brutality of her final fate. But she’s perfectly capable of deception and cruelty herself, and her flaws aren’t whitewashed here – even though that sometimes makes her difficult to root for. The excellent lead, Lucy Boynton, is equal parts insolent charisma and wary vulnerability, a woman so accustomed to withstanding life’s hard knocks that she finds it difficult to let her guard down under any circumstances.
If the story has a moral centre, it is provided by Toby Jones’s John Bickford. Jones is as superb as ever, albeit in the kind of role he’s perhaps in danger of finding himself stuck in for good: a dogged, principled and meticulous defender of the best principles of justice who is doomed to remain a prisoner of his own conscience. Bickford was the solicitor who repeatedly tried – but ultimately failed – to keep Ellis from the hangman’s noose. His attempts to construct a defence that would allow a judge to show Ellis mercy was, at least in part, undermined by the defendant herself, who refused to dish the dirt on the man she killed.
However, what A Cruel Love makes clear is that Ellis was a woman of her times. The legal system was primed to conspire against her. The permissive society hadn’t yet arrived, and a woman in Ellis’s situation was always going to attract the opprobrium of the nation’s curtain twitchers. But also, the recent end of the Second World War had left uncertainty and damage – both to society’s structures and to many individuals within it.
Take Desmond Cussen, for example. Cussen flew Lancaster bombers during the war but afterwards, took to drink and what might euphemistically be described as “the fast life”. While Ellis was obsessed with her violent, rakish eventual victim Blakely, Cussen was obsessed with Ellis. “I will save you,” he promises (or possibly threatens) at one point, “whether you want me to or not”. And so, a woman like Ellis was trapped: between the physical and psychological abuse dished out by Blakely and the more subtle manipulation of Cussen. The gun with which Blakely was shot was most likely provided by Cussen but, as it tends to do, the establishment closed ranks.
Really, though, the establishment had locked Ellis out long before she found herself in the dock. Throughout this drama, there’s a bubbling polemical undercurrent, centred around class as well as gender. An abusive, spoiled monster he may have been, but David Blakely was a creature of the upper middle class and in 1950s Britain, that represented its own form of impunity. As a result, he always held the cards. He’s engaged to another woman for the duration of his and Ellis’s relationship and the direction in which he’s ultimately heading is always clear. The scenes in which Ellis spends time with Blakely and his posh, amoral friends the Findlaters are beautifully observed. Ellis is always immaculate but however hard she tries, it’s never quite enough. The power imbalance is cruel and, for Ellis, impossible to overcome. “When you’re cross,” observes Blakely, with casual brutality, “the accent slips.”
Ellis has been a divisive figure since her execution – at times, both demonised and sanctified. But she’s always been ambiguous too. Her story has sustained numerous films and books (this drama is based on Carol Ann Lee’s book A Fine Day for a Hanging: The Real Ruth Ellis Story). Over the years, it’s become clear that this was a story only partially told. The jury in Ellis’s trial took just 20 minutes to deliver their guilty verdict and condemn her to death. However, as this fine, empathetic drama shows, Ellis’s legacy was far from settled. In fact, it remains contested to this day.
Part two of ’A Cruel Love’ airs 12 March 9pm and all parts available on ITVX
