A new BBC drama premiering Monday night will take viewers back to a tragic, racially motivated hate crime, and imagine a life that could have been.
The feature-length drama Anthony, which airs on BBC One at 8:30pm on July 27, imagines the life of Anthony Walker had the young teen not been murdered in a devastating attack.
Let’s look at the true story behind the BBC drama…
Anthony Walker’s murder
Anthony Walker was a Black British youth of Jamaican descent from Merseyside who was an aspiring lawyer, basketball player and church youth leader.
In July 2005, at the age of 18, Walker was subjected to verbal racial abuse by Michael Barton (brother of footballer Joey Barton), then 17, and Paul Taylor, then 20, at a bus stop in Huyton, Knowsley.
He was with his cousin Marcus Binns and girlfriend Louise Thompson, and the trio began to walk to another bus stop.
However, Barton and Taylor followed them in a car, chased them into nearby McGoldrick Park, and ambushed them.
Binns and Thompson managed to escape and run away, but Walker was fatally injured when Taylor hit him in the head with an ice axe.
Walker was taken to hospital and pronounced dead by 5:25am.
Barton and Taylor fled to Amsterdam the next day, but when police named them as suspects, Joey Barton publicly appealed for them to return to the UK.
They returned to Liverpool on August 3, and were arrested and charged with Walker’s murder. Both are serving life sentences.
The BBC feature-length drama Anthony now imagines what might have happened to Anthony if he were not tragically killed.
The drama opens with Walker at the imagined age of 25, showing him getting married, and works backwards in time to the date he was killed in real life.
Writer Jimmy McGovern worked with Walker’s mother Gee to ensure the drama was a fitting tribute to him.
Gee Walker told BBC Radio 4’s Today show that Walker’s family will always wonder what his life could have been like.
"When the judge passed a sentence of life, we are the ones who are sentenced to a life of 'what?', or 'how?'" she said.
"We wonder what he would have been like, or how he would have turned out. We wonder what he'd be doing now. We are the ones who are left with this abyss of pain and wondering."
Anthony premieres on BBC One at 8:30pm Monday July 27, and will be available on BBC iPlayer afterwards.
