EXCLUSIVE: It was more than a year ago that a 45-year-old British woman, Nicola Bulley, went missing walking her dog in the sleepy northern English town of St Michael’s on Wyre.
What followed was three weeks of frenzy, one of the country’s most publicized, televised searches for a missing person in recent years that ended in tragedy when Bulley’s body was discovered on February 19. A few months later, a coroner determined that Bulley’s death was due to accidental drowning.
For Kate Beal, CEO of Confessions of a Psycho Killer indie Woodcut Media and founder of the UK’s nascent Association of True Crime Producers (ATCP), who was a similar age to Bulley and is also a mother, that three-week period and the media scrum that accompanied it did not sit comfortably, and she set about mulling over how the true crime TV community could ensure there was not a repeat.
“You had production companies approaching the scene and even worse was the discourse on Twitter (now X) and general interest from the public,” says Beal. “It felt like it completely lacked subtlety. High-profile criminologists and divers were reporting from the scene. In the UK, news is regulated and has standards and it felt like we’d gone beyond that and beyond our moral jurisdiction, and that this might be because of the prominence of true programing.”
As the high-profile fallout from Netflix smash Baby Reindeer poses fresh questions about ethics in TV, Deadline has spoken with execs and those at the coalface of true crime production to slowly build a picture of the considerations around making a true crime show in the social media age, and the level of care that is being taken.
“Our Jeremy Kyle moment”
It was Bulley’s death, Beal says, along with the tragic and brutal murder of Sarah Everard by a policeman, that represented a “watershed” moment in the movement to improve duty of care practices and create ethical shows in the thriving true crime space. Around this time, Netflix UK docs boss Kate Townsend wrote to fellow factual execs urging a pan-industry approach to doc-making, according to UK TV trade Broadcast.
If the community didn’t act, Beal worried the true crime genre would “have our Jeremy Kyle moment,” a reference to the former ITV daytime host whose 15-year-old show was axed in 2019 following the suicide of a contestant, leading to a duty of care reckoning in the reality and entertainment space.
Heather Jones, who sits on the other side of the producer-commissioner fence as the Chief Creative Officer of A+E Networks EMEA, concurs that the Bulley and Everard tragedies spurred execs into action. “You only had to look at the way members of the public were being impacted,” she says. “The local villages, the schools, this went even further than just the victim and relatives.”
Enter the Beal-chaired ATCP, which counts some of the nation’s most storied producers amongst its member base and has forged a set of guidelines to help steer production companies through the gnarly process of making true crime. The group has been going for less than a year and has already attracted interest from big companies on the other side of the pond.
About time too, its founders felt, for a genre that has exploded in recent years, driven by the entrance of the streamers and hits including Don’t F**k with Cats and Making a Murderer, according to A+E’s Jones, who runs EMEA for a network famed for its true crime fare.
“For a long time, true crime was seen as a guilty pleasure – a niche, specialist area of production and the preserve of a small number of incredibly talented and skilled producers,” she explains. “Then Netflix came in, spent lots of money and turned it into a premium watercooler genre and there has been this explosion of producers getting involved. The fact there are so many producers doing this who might only have entertainment chops, well, having this association to give those guidelines and provide someone to pick up the phone is to be applauded.”
David Wilson, one of the UK’s leading criminologists and the face of Channel 4’s In the Footsteps of Killers, says he has turned down several opportunities to be in shows that he believes either lacked duty of care provisions or were attempting to over-sensationalize by, for example, thinking they could “delve into the mind of a serial killer.”
“I find some indies completely disingenuous,” he rails. “You have to be immensely careful. I have TV experience and am in a fortunate position where I can either tear a show down entirely or stop filming if I feel pressure and say, ‘No we are not going there’. The kickback that this sometimes creates is very illuminating.” The boom in true crime podcasts such as Serial and YouTube shows, Wilson adds, has also created something of a two-tier system in terms of duty care, which he describes as “incredibly threatening.”
Some TV producers entering the true crime space for the first time don’t realize the level of care they have to apply, the sheer amount of people they have to offer the right of reply to or all the extra measures that need to be considered, Jones adds.
“The desperation to win business can be a dangerous thing but duty of care has to be the last thing you cut corners on,” adds Ian Rumsey, who runs ITN Productions , which makes hundreds of hours of true crime per year including Prime Video’s recent The Confession. “If you’re a small company or a freelancer desperate to sign up that key contributor, then it’s a danger.”
At the coalface
Some people Deadline has spoken with about making true crime today spoke on condition of anonymity.
One has worked on some of the most gruesome true crime shows of the past few years, progams in which relatives have to face the reality of seeing their loved ones’ dismembered body parts, for example.
“When I’m doing the interviews [for shows] I find them OK but it’s the delayed trauma that’s the problem,” this person says. “You are walking around living your life and suddenly you are just like, ‘Oh gosh,’ and are reminded of something completely gruesome.”
Woodcut’s Beal notes that she has had intrusive thoughts in the past, adding: “You have to work out how to deal with them.”
The tentacles of a true crime show spread far and wide. If a production company is doing its job properly, dozens of people including those who have committed the crimes are required to be given right of reply. Entire villages can be torn up by a terrible incident, not to mention the fact that the subjects must of course be informed, often via their prison liaison teams.
A second true crime exec, who recently worked on a big streamer show, says she received a furious phone call from someone whose wife was the stepdaughter of a show’s subject, and who was threatening to call the police.
“He launched into a tirade down the phone and I found it quite upsetting,” says this second person. “I hadn’t done anything wrong but it was like a pressure cooker and the top had come off.”
A third exec, who is working on an “unusual” project that follows a victim’s family member as they try to find out more about what happened to their relative, was given the job of writing a duty of care protocol before the project had even started. “As our research uncovers information, we are sometimes in the strange position of telling the contributor things about their past – a reversal of the more usual flow of information from contributor to production,” this person explains. “And given the nature of the subject, this information isn’t always positive.”
This person tries to be in touch with contributors on an almost daily basis, and not just during filming. The strategy feeds into Beal and the ATCP’s desire for the victim to be the “North Star of every production.” “You have to think how you would feel if you were the victim’s mum watching the show,” adds Beal.
Although you can only join if you have previously made a true crime show, the ATCP is providing regular webinars and support for all and sundry. Its mantra is defined by 13 guidelines, which include “considering the potential impact of the program on the wider community to ensure that it does not incite or encourage further criminal activity,” “being transparent and honest with all participants in the production process” and “providing a long-term contact point for contributors.”
The latter taps into the ATCP’s drive to make duty of care more holistic by helping contributors get a grip on noise around a show’s premiere, especially on social media, along with providing lengthy aftercare in a similar vein to reality shows like Love Island.
Speaking at this month’s Creative Cities Convention, Julian Bellamy, who runs Love Island maker ITV Studios, said the true crime genre has been a “pioneer in terms of production support,” while it is the reality genre that has “really set the scene for best practice” in terms of aftercare.
Soho Studios boss Ian Lamarra, who makes multiple true crime shows including the Wilson-led In The Footsteps of Killers, says serious problems arise when there is a “lack of communication between program execs and channel marketing.”
Lamarra notes: “The same consideration for those who may be affected by the show should always be extended to the marketing and program publicity, otherwise this results in unexpected or sensationalist images or advertising, which can be as damaging to victims as any video content would, and without the chance for execs to prepare anyone who may be affected.”
In a similar vein to splashy reality shows, Lamarra and Rumsey argue passionately that all networks and streamers should have a line in their budget for duty of care. Rather than having a negative impact on margins, this can in fact be good for business, Rumsey says, explaining how his team recently won a pitch to shadow a police force almost solely off the back of wellbeing knowhow.
“We didn’t go into that pitch with a glossy showreel, we came with a ‘rough and ready’ video showing the level of care that we offer,” he says.
ITNP has made shows for Netflix, Peacock and Amazon, and Rumsey says that, while one might be tempted to blame the streamers when mulling over duty of care hazards in true crime, these deep-pocketed players are in fact squeaky clean.
“They have been transformationally good [on duty of care],” he adds. “And that can only be a good thing because indies [who have worked for streamers] then talk to broadcasters [about these duty of care standards] and that becomes engrained in people’s muscle memory.”
The streamers do, however, remain highly cautious when discussing these topics.
Netflix declined to participate in this feature. Furthermore, a series producer working for an unidentified streamer, who was due to chat with Deadline anonymously about their experiences in true crime, was warned by the streamer not to speak to members of the press, we are told.
American caution
This warning may be reflective of caution in the States when it comes to addressing these issues head on and in the public eye, but Beal says American producers and buyers are showing more interest in the ATCP and some may have become fully paid-up members by the end of this year.
One such major is Blue Ant Media, producer of a wealth of true crime including Peacock three-parter Epstein’s Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell.
Blue Ant regularly engages therapists, hosts an all-hands meeting at the start of each week to check in with staff and creates on-screen cards to avoid triggering the audience with sensitive subject matter, explains Blue Ant SVP of Unscripted Jennifer Harkness.
The U.S. lacks a TV regulator in the vein of the UK’s Ofcom, so Harkness says it is even more incumbent on the individual production companies to keep duty of care front and center. “We have to make sure we are looking at this and putting in place guidelines,” she adds. “The more we talk about it, the more we want to be responsible producers, and that is key.”
It’s easy to dismiss true crime as cheap and sensationalist, yet those Deadline speaks with argue passionately for its importance – one only need look at Netflix’s Don’t F**k With Cats to see how a true crime show can make a difference.
“People on the Guardian-reading end of British culture always want to look down their noses at true crime but I explain repeatedly that it is necessary,” concludes Wilson. “Because if we understand the circumstances in which loved ones might fall victim to crime we can then use that understanding to make sure others don’t. A sense of interest in true crime is an evolutionary adaptive strategy.”
Crucial to this evolution is duty of care, and crucial to the success of duty of care will be those stalwart producers and buyers giving over more time and budget to ensure it is adhered to in all its forms.