# Place of Execution (2008)

> A filmmaker decades later reopens the 1963 disappearance of a thirteen-year-old girl and the detective who was hailed a hero for hanging the wrong man.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/25124

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 3
- Episode runtime: 60 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: crime, drama, mystery
- Network: ITV1
- Cast: Juliet Stevenson, Lee Ingleby, Philip Jackson, Greg Wise, Tony Maudsley, Elizabeth Day, Danny Tennant, Poppy Goodburn
- TMDB rating: 7.4/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1239129/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: brooding, melancholic, tense, unsettling

## What critics say

Critics broadly praise its patient, atmospheric mystery and the lead performances, while noting its deliberate pace and bleak tone.

## Synopsis

Place of Execution (2008) is a British three-part miniseries created for ITV1, a brooding crime mystery adapted from a novel. Juliet Stevenson plays controversial filmmaker Catherine Heathcote, who returns to a English village decades after thirteen-year-old Alison Carter vanished on a freezing December night in 1963. Her camera turns toward DI George Bennett, played by Lee Ingleby, the young detective who gathered enough evidence to see his suspect hanged and was celebrated as a hero by the townspeople. Lee Ingleby and Juliet Stevenson carry the investigation across three hour-long episodes, as the filmmaker digs into a community that has built its pride around one case. Greg Wise and Tony Maudsley add layers of local power and police loyalty to the story. The engine of the series is the tension between a public legend and private doubt, pressed through interviews, old evidence and a missing body that never surfaces. Its atmosphere is cold, rural and quietly oppressive, with a measured pace and a sustained sense of unease. Fans of Broadchurch, Cracker and The Staircase will find resonance in its patient, morally unsettled take on a small town hiding its past.

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