Current watch. As someone who has watched and read quite a bit on the case of Peter Sutcliffe, the infamous Yorkshire Ripper, I'm surprised I hadn't already seen this two-part UK TV mini-series from 2000. Focusing on the years-long hunt to catch the Ripper and told primarily from the view of George Oldfield, the police chief assigned with leading the task force to track down the killer, this really is a quite engrossing watch. Alun Armstrong is terrific as Oldfield, who took the case personally and eventually let it completely destroy his health and career. He also let himself become sidetracked by the infamous Ripper hoax letters and tape recordings, which took the investigation into a false direction and let Sutcliffe get away with several more murders before he was finally caught in early 1981. Chillingly, the authentic tape recordings sent by the phony ripper are used in this production (at the time, the sender of those fake letters and tape recording were still unknown - DNA left on one of the letters eventually led to the arrest of John Samuel Humble in 2005, who admitted to being the hoaxer).
