LAST ONE TO BE EXECUTED

PEOPLE TURN LOVE INTO ANOTHER TRAGIC MESS

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The romantic tryst starts innocently enough with an accidental bump in a London club where all three love interests intersect.

Director Lee Haven Jones continually spins narratives together as if in a love dance, spinning and spinning until the characters finally fall into the arms of destiny in A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story (Series 2025).

London’s youngest female club manager becomes the thread that binds in the 1950s after working in the hospitality industry since the age of 14.

Initially, Ruth Ellis, played by Lucy Boynton, has an admirer, Desmond, who follows her from her previous place of employment to The Little Club, which she manages. Fate would not favor the bold though, as Ruth also meets charismatic British race car driver David Blakely. The two love birds become smitten while Desmond looks on, relegated to a third party friendship.

The director uses a wraparound in this four part series, and from the onset, tells everyone about the murder that causes Ruth to be held in prison. Boynton has a role in all three intertwining narratives, with Ruth in prison waiting for her sentence as the main linear narrative, and then Ruth in a love relationship with David as a second narrative, and Ruth in a friendship that grows into love with Desmond in a third narrative.

Jones constantly flashes backward to show the story behind the imprisonment, creating suspense by only ever so gently revealing the details of the lethal love triangle.

Little impressions complicate the moral dilemma of a single woman with children surviving in a rather conservative era still dominated by family values. Ruth has two young children from previous relationships. Ruth’s son lost his father in the war, while Ruth loses her daughter in a divorce settlement.

Were it not for the prison wraparound, one would not expect Ruth Ellis to be known as the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom.

The telling of the story keeps everyone interested though, as the reasons for Ruth shooting her lover are gradually revealed. On one level, there is a bit of uncertainty as to which lover she trusts more, and why that one.

Ruth signs a detailed confession without legal advice and everything seems to be stuck until her complicity is explained. Initially, Ruth accepts her fate in the gallows describing her willingness to accept an eye for an eye justice after so brazenly shooting her lover in the street in front of witnesses.

The legal drama gradually takes on more of the backstory as the relationships between the players are explained.

Toby Jones plays the defense lawyer, John Bickford, who puts a lot of work into just convincing Ruth to plead not guilty. But Bickford cannot convince Ruth to provide the evidence necessary for the defense of provocation.

To avoid the death penalty, Ruth only has to explain the cause of her jealous rage that resulted in the murder. Instead, Ruth appears cold and deliberate, and lacking in any remorse.

Eventually, the camera takes up the story of how everyone got to where they are. Each episode relies on the camera moving through time, one closeup after another, such as going from Ruth’s portrait in the present, to David’s portrait in the near past, to Desmond’s in the more distant past.

 Various nuances filter into the script, such as London class conflicts, with Desmond being a heroic veteran who flew Lancaster Bombers over Germany during the war, and David from the aristocracy driving race cars for sport.

Each lover is attracted to Ruth for different reasons. Desmond is more sympathetic toward the hard working single mother of two children, while David is more of a sexual predator who sees the beautiful club manager as something to posses.

Scenes are bathed in shadows, with highlights moving into the foreground, and a lot of cigarette smoke back and forth, to create the tone and atmosphere of the deadly secrets driving three innocent people together into a mortal conflict.

The legal dilemma is established in episode one, but by episode, two the ugly abusive details of the relationships are explained with the camera looking into everyone’s past lives.

The legal drama takes on more importance in the narrative again by episode three, with the lawyer who had been left helpless now proclaiming everything to be an ethical disgrace.

Boynton shows how Ruth succumbs to her fate, but whose austere exterior, which begins to crumble, only hides a lot of intimate trauma.

A Cruel Love is streaming on BritBox.