It’s the early hours of the morning. A young woman takes a black cab home after a night out in London. The seemingly friendly driver tells her he’s had a win at the casino and invites her to celebrate with him. Insisting she has a drink, which he provides, the female passenger accepts it out of politeness.
Unbeknown to her she has been drugged, and she slips into unconsciousness. The following morning, horrifying details of how the driver sexually assaulted her start to come back.
This was the ordeal endured by the numerous victims of prolific sex attacker John Worboys, who is played with nuanced menace by Daniel Mays in Believe Me – ITV’s unflinching four-part true-crime dramatisation of the case. Dubbed “the black cab rapist”, Worboys preyed on vulnerable women for years using the same twisted modus operandi. But his crimes went undetected for far too long.
Writer Jeff Pope’s shocking articulation of the story tells how the system drastically failed Worboys’s victims, who felt the authorities didn’t investigate thoroughly, and that they simply weren’t believed.
Episode 1 focuses on single mother Sarah Adams (a false name to protect the real victim’s identity). Portrayed by an empathetic Aimée-Ffion Edwards (Slow Horses), Sarah’s claims of her drugging and assault are dismissed in 2003 due to a perceived lack of evidence.
From the minute the Metropolitan Police are involved, it’s clear they could be doing more to help. She is subjected to a misogynistic and troubling line of questioning from the officers on the case, with implications that her drug-taking, excessive drinking and promiscuity played a significant part in what happened.
Worboys, meanwhile, is chillingly adept at covering his tracks. Second-guessing the police and ruthlessly controlling the narrative, when Sarah comes round in hospital the next morning, she’s told her “kindly cabbie” was the one who ensured her safety. This immediately undermines subsequent allegations of violence, while toxicology tests also fail to detect any substances that would point to the victim being drugged. Worboys has thought of everything.
Sarah, and Worboys’s other victims, must endure the indignity and stress of being interviewed multiple times with little regard for the psychological impact of reliving their ordeal. There are degrading physical examinations to gather intimate evidence, and the ignominy of being passed along to different officers as interest in solving the crime appears to fade. Within a few months, the case is dropped altogether, and a shellshocked Sarah must somehow pick up the pieces and carry on with her life.
Jeff Pope is a maestro at crafting dramas that eloquently voice the public’s anger towards a system that too often gets it so spectacularly wrong. His previous notable work includes The Reckoning, about the crimes of Jimmy Savile, as well as Little Boy Blue, the true story of the 2007 murder of Rhys Jones in Liverpool, plus 2013 drama Lucan and last year’s Disney+ series Suspect: the Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes.
With Believe Me, Pope now directly questions how a dangerous man like Worboys was allowed to remain at large and continue attacking women for so long. He, the victims, and the viewer, want answers that become increasingly difficult to obtain, shining a light on serious failings within the Met that severely compromise how much they can be trusted by the people they are meant to protect.
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Believe Me continues at 9pm on ITV1 on Monday 11 May, with all four episodes available to stream now on ITVX.
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