ITV COMMISSION TRUE CRIME DRAMA, The YORKSHIRE RIPPER

ITV have commissioned The Yorkshire Ripper (w/t) from the same producers as Des and White House Farm.

The drama will depict one of the most notorious and shocking serial killer cases in the world, the hunt for Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, between October 1975 and January 1981, police undertook the biggest manhunt in British criminal history. The search for Sutcliffe lasted five years, involved over a thousand officers and changed the way the British police worked forever.

Polly Hill, Head of drama at ITV, said: “I am delighted to be working with Willow and Paul again, after they made the brilliant White House Farm. This promises to be a definitive look at this infamous case, and will be sensitively dramatised for ITV by this formidable team, who have a proven track record in bringing these true stories to screen.”

Writer George Kay: “In a story full with eye-watering statistics, one for me has always stood out: Peter Sutcliffe rendered 23 children motherless. That one fact in itself demands that any definitive drama about this case should encompass far more than just the story of a police investigation. We will focus not just on the police, therefore, but the victims, their families, those who were attacked but not believed, those who whose lives were permanently changed. This is not the story of a Ripper who hailed from Yorkshire, but the story of how Yorkshire was ripped apart.”

More information on the six-part series will be revealed in due course.