Peter Farquhar was an English philologist and had dedicated his career to teaching. He was considered a man close to students, understanding of the conflicts that flourish during adolescence. In private, he had problems reconciling the Christian faith with a homosexuality about which he did not dare to act.
When she crossed paths with a handsome young man named Ben Field, she believed she had found in old age what she had always been denied. Ben wrote poetry, studied the sacred scriptures, and was fascinated by any form of knowledge. What Peter had before him, however, was the author of his death.
The Fifth Commandment, which Filmin incorporates into its catalog this Tuesday, narrates a real case in the United Kingdom that occurred in 2015 and that almost went unnoticed due to the profile of the victims. The modus operandi of Field, here played by Éanna Hardwicke, was clear. She infiltrated the community with education and religiosity as alibis. He was respectful and sensitive to older people. And, if he detected that someone had no family or was vulnerable, he planned to seduce them to become the main beneficiary of the will.
This incursion by Sarah Phelps, responsible for adapting novels such as Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and The Unforeseen Vacancy, could be described as a classic case of British television: the crime chronicle is approached from a fiction with journalistic zeal. The transformation of a crime into entertainment is not above the search for truth and respect for the victims.
This school of fiction sometimes entails a distance that plays against the work as an audiovisual production in the construction of characters, situations and narrative gears. But The Fifth Commandment draws out the humanity and terror of the faithful and coherent presentation of the facts, constructing a compelling and realistic tragedy, always anchored in the perspective of the victims and the police investigation.
The screenwriter conceives Peter Farquhar and Ann Moore-Martin, another person who crossed Ben Field’s path, beyond their status as victims with the help of Timothy Spall and Anne Reid. They could be seen as deluded for letting an attractive young man full of humble promise into their lives. But Phelps strives to show his virtues, good faith and a fundamental principle: every human being has the right to a truce, which is what Peter and Ann believed they had found, after having lonely lives. It is a miracle that, by showing them so vulnerable, it is possible to vindicate them.
And, in its portrait of the construction of a cold-blooded murder and a gaslighting scheme, it makes your hair stand on end at the killer’s calculating mind and at an uncomfortable truth: We are all vulnerable because, with a little Luckily, we will also reach the age of the protagonists, still with dreams and the hope of new friendships, conversations, stimuli and company.
