Nuance and subtlety? In a true-crime documentary? Murder Trial: The Killing of Dr Brenda Page shows it can be done. In a genre awash with lurid exploitation, this programme makes a convincing case for respectful diligence.
Brenda Page, a geneticist at the University of Aberdeen, was found bludgeoned to death in her flat in the city in July 1978. She was 32. The only suspect was her ex-husband, research scientist Christopher Harrisson, but at the time there was insufficient evidence to pursue him. The case was reopened in 2015, with the hope of utilising advances in DNA technology; Harrisson was duly charged, and his trial took place in February 2023.
Murder Trial simply follows those court proceedings. Of course, we visit the relevant locations, peruse archive reporting and see documents and photographs that played a part in the investigation. There are interviews with the prosecution and defence counsel, too, and with Page’s family. But those embellishments are kept to a minimum – we base ourselves inside the high court in Aberdeen.
In a compact grey room that no crime drama would ever choose as a setting, fixed cameras and basic lighting do nothing to make the judicial process more involving. Nor do the programmemakers try to reel us in by strategically timing when revelations hit us. There are only two episodes, so there’s none of the manipulation seen in so many Netflix true-crime documentaries, where a cliffhanger twist at the end of one instalment pulls us into the next. Murder Trial permits itself an opening flash-forward to Harrisson in the witness box, refusing to accept the prosecution’s characterisation of him as a Jekyll and Hyde figure. Apart from that, the chronology of the trial is the chronology of the programme. Its only other bow to sensationalism is the use of a camera aimed at the public gallery, where the emotions of Page’s nephew, wincing at every new piece of disturbing evidence, are intruded on perhaps a few times too many.
It takes time for a show as demurely presented as Murder Trial to reveal its worth. There are hints that it will be an instructive look at domestic abuse and how hard it can be to prove, and that it will examine how the media can obstruct the course of justice by focusing on supposedly salacious details, especially where the victim is a young woman. Although both issues are present, in the end this is something more prosaic, but no less engrossing for that.
The case proves to be one of circumstantial evidence, where every arrow points towards Harrisson, but without any one fact proving guilt on its own. In the back and forth between prosecution and defence as the crown presents its case, we experience the very essence of an adversarial justice system, as every accusation is dutifully tested, sometimes to destruction. Family members and acquaintances testify, for example, that Page said she was scared of and hurt by Harrisson during their marriage, and that he had expressed an intention to kill her following their divorce. Hearsay, says the defence.
More convincing are the written words of Page herself. She filed for divorce in 1976, citing a pattern of accusation, intimidation and aggression that we would now recognise as coercive control – and chillingly expressed a fear of what could come next. “If I do depart this earth rather suddenly,” she wrote, “do please make sure I get a good PM.” What do those initials stand for? Postmortem. The defence continues to do what it must, arguing that these are still mere accusations. We hang on every thrust and parry, thinking that surely the latest allegation will be the clincher, only to be confounded.
The biggest test comes with the evidence about the night before Page was found. It suggests Harrisson broke into her flat and lay in wait, raging with jealousy after following her to a hotel and seeing her dining with men from the oil industry. That she did this regularly, having signed up to work with an escort agency, was the aspect of her life that got the tabloids excited, but Murder Trial accords it no more attention than the legalities demand.
Now, though, we can enjoy one of the staples of a good true-crime documentary: a fascinatingly eccentric chief suspect. The climax is the cravatted, octogenarian academic Harrisson taking the stand, introduced by the prosecution with footage of a bizarre police interview in which, when asked to describe his temper, he replies: “Even. Like the snow in Good King Wenceslas.” As the accused tries to use calm articulacy to rebut incriminating DNA evidence, Murder Trial delivers the sort of drama that other crime documentaries have to manufacture.
• Murder Trial: The Killing of Dr Brenda Page was on BBC Two and is available on iPlayer
