# The Sixth Commandment (2023)

> A dramatisation of the 2015 real-life murder of a closeted former schoolmaster by his young churchwarden protege.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/147867

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 4
- Episode runtime: 57 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: crime, drama
- Created by: Sarah Phelps
- Network: BBC One
- Cast: Timothy Spall, Anne Reid, Éanna Hardwicke, Annabel Scholey, Anna Crilly, Jonathan Aris, Peter Sullivan, Ben Bailey Smith
- TMDB rating: 7.7/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20916306/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: bleak, sorrowful, unsettling, measured, morally uneasy

## What critics say

Reviewers and audiences broadly praise the miniseries as a gripping, well-acted dramatisation of a true-life murder, with Timothy Spall's performance singled out.

## Synopsis

The Sixth Commandment (2023) is a British true crime limited series created by Sarah Phelps for BBC One, a single four-episode run of roughly 57 minutes each. It dramatises the October 2015 killing of Peter Farquhar, a former Stowe schoolmaster and deeply closeted evangelical Christian, played by Timothy Spall. The story turns on the relationship between Farquhar and his 28-year-old student and young churchwarden Ben Field, played by Éanna Hardwicke, whose bond grows around faith, secrecy and a shared hidden life. Anne Reid plays Ann Moore-Martin, and Anna Crilly and Annabel Scholey add further perspectives on the people orbiting the case, while Jonathan Aris appears as DCI Mark Glover. Each episode slowly peels back the public respectability of a quiet English community to reveal what lies beneath. The mood is quietly suffocating, sorrowful and morally uneasy, with a measured, character-driven pace rather than flashy procedural beats. Its tone sits in the lineage of prestige British true crime dramas, and fans of The Staircase and Des will find similar resonance in its forensic attention to ordinary lives and its unsettling portrait of a secret double life. Written with Phelps's sharp, literary control, the miniseries lingers on guilt, faith and the cost of concealment in a provincial English setting.

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