I’ve been enjoying the pleasures of a BritBox trial subscription recently, and in addition to giving me all the UK content I could possibly desire, I’m pleased to announce that there’s a lot of queer stuff on there. I’m not just talking about the covertly gay stuff like the delightful Rosemary & Thyme (think Rizzoli & Isles of the 90s) but actual stuff. There’s the fantastic Mr. Loverman, about a closeted older Black man dealing with the fallout from a years-long affair with his best friend, the adoption drama Lost Boys & Fairies, and the Aussie drama Single, Out, and the magnificent period piece The Confessions of Frannie Langton, to name just a few.
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But the series that caught my eye seemed, at first, to have nothing to do with gayness. Until I got deeper in.
The 2024 BBC series The Sixth Commandment stars Timothy Spall, which is all I needed to know to start watching. It’s a gripping, slow-burning, agonizingly suspenseful dramatization of the real life murder case of Ben Field, who seduced and murdered a gay academic named Peter Farquhar in 2015. He went on to attempt another murder of an older woman, Ann Moore Martin, before being stopped by Moore Martin’s relatives just in time.
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In addition to Spall—one of our greatest living actors—taking on the role of Farquhar with sensitivity and vulnerability, Éanna Hardwicke delivers a masterfully creepy performance as the murderer Ben Field, a man we can never quite get a handle on. Is Field actually queer, or was he just biding his time in a sexless relationship with Farquhar? The wise thing The Sixth Commandment does is to not get too bogged down in hypotheses. Instead, we’re left with these bizarre, fascinating characters, and soon enough we understand how more than one vulnerable senior fell prey to a young man who seemed to come into their lives with the best intentions.
It’s a twisty, at times shocking watch, but it will keep you gripped until the last minute.
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