“Des” (2020)
Still portrait of an “unremarkable” serial killer.
Still portrait of an “unremarkable” serial killer.
London born writer Brian Masters book “Killing for Company: The case of Dennis Nilsen” was one of my very first serious dives into the genre of true crime, serial killers or the much decried land of the conspiracy, and still resides to this day, battered and dog-eared on my bookshelf with “Let Me Take You Down” by Jack Jones and “On the Trail of the Assassins” by Jim Garrison for grisly company. I have long held a macabre fascination for the grotesque sub cultures these have become but not for the horrific and unspeakable inhumanity, more the objectivity that time, books, journals and hard documented evidence affords us. Cases such as the inhuman crimes of Dennis “Des” Nilsen together with any serial killer you wish to name now come packaged with audio/video interviews, confessions, written, pictorial evidence and a wealth of past/present interviews and invariably, and very pleasingly for me, there is now a considered approach to the most intriguing part of a society that’s “more interested in death than in life”, the mind of a serial killer.
The author is represented in this 2020 ITV 3 part dramatisation by Jason Watkins in a somewhat fractious face off with under pressure Police Detective Inspector Peter Jay (excellently realised by the chain smoking angst of veteran English actor Daniel Mays) and in a heavily male dominated drama this is brilliantly shattered by Bronagh Waugh in two hear-rending scenes of unimaginable grief. Real life stock footage of the day is scattered throughout, of Margaret Thatcher and the decay of the early 1980’s and a London home to the homeless and the desperate. I also noted several re-enactments that would create the iconic images of my youth to accompany the words of Brian Masters in his zeitgeist book, of a tall “unremarkable” man in a police “mug shot” and of that same man travelling in a Police van to court, his facial features partly obscured by the bars that would now hold him forever, and until his death in 2018.
More famously known within my family as a flamboyant regeneration in the behemoth Doctor Who franchise in the early 2000’s, David Tennant is a picture of calm methodical stillness shrouding the narcissistic schizophrenic serial killer of “Des” or “The Muswell Hill Murderer” or more fully and formally, Dennis Nilsen. We never see Nilsen’s heinous crimes but we can visualise them through his open, candid and awkwardly comedic re-telling’s of the last nights on earth for fifteen innocent, desperate human beings he strangled, drowned or snuffed the life out of between 1978 and 1983. There may be more still with Nilsen originally charged and eventually found guilty on a count of six murders and two attempted murders but in subsequent years two further murders have been evidenced firmly against him, as well as the shocking relatively recent DNA revelation that his first murder victim was just 14 years old.
Coldly but not callously, Nilsen recounts unemotionally that he has a “responsibility for my story” before stressing that he will not allow the “exploitation” of the stories of the deaths of the men he killed for company and control, and whom he could not bear to see leaving him. “It’s a relief to get it off my chest” he half laughs as the drama is painted of a strangely detached schizophrenic killer writing his own story and legend, together with the English author with whom he doesn’t so much be-friend as softly beguile. “You’re so fucking fascinated by him” screams Detective Inspector Peter Jay at the author in one of the drama’s best scenes and one that benefits for being absent from the deliberate coldness of Tennant’s performance, perfectly encapsulated when he chillingly announces, with the coldest dead eyes of zero empathy or humanity
“I wanted control and ownership of this beautiful body”.
Dennis Andrew Nilsen (23rd November 1945–12th May 2018) was originally found guilty of six murders and two attempted murders at The Old Bailey in London in late 1983 and sentenced to a life sentence with the stipulation he serve at least 25 years. The original sentence was increased a decade later to a full life term meaning that the Aberdeenshire born serial killer would never, ever, be released. According to apocryphal lore he continued to meet with author Brian Masters for a decade or so into his sentence, was attacked by another inmate early into his sentence and left with severe facial scars before being transferred to and from high profile secure units in several UK prisons before his eventual death, aged 72, in 2018.
“I could only relate to a dead image of the person I could love. The image of my dead grandfather would be the model of him at his most striking in my mind. It seems necessary for them to have been dead in order that I could express those feelings which were the feelings I held sacred for my grandfather. It was a pseudo-sexual, infantile love, which had not yet developed and matured. The sight of them brought me a bitter sweetness and a temporary peace and fulfilment”.
Extract from Dennis Nilsen’s prison journals, written while on remand in prison, April 1983.
In 2021, David Tennant won the International Emmy Award for Best Actor with Rotten Tomatoes describing Des as “a smartly scripted, sufficiently eerie true crime drama anchored by a chilling performance from David Tennant.” The Radio Times would further praise Tennant’s performance as “one of his best in an impeccable career” with The Guardian having the final word by declaring the three part serial drama as a “sensitive, finely worked drama showing the unrelentingly bleak reality of the monstrous narcissist”.
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always, and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. My three most recently published film and television articles are linked below or there’s well over 200 blog articles (with 400+ individual film reviews) within my archives from which to choose:
“Spector” (2022)
Madness in the mansion on the hill.medium.com
“Mindcage” (2022)
This Se7en rip off is a deadly sin.medium.com
“Sicario” (2015)
My Denis Villeneuve odyssey is now complete.medium.com