In The Witness, writer-creator Rob Williams and director Alex Winckler retell the 1992 killing of Rachel Nickell and its aftermath through a three-episode crime drama. On 15 July 1992, Rachel and her young son, Alex, were walking on Wimbledon Common when she was attacked and sexually assaulted by a stranger. She was stabbed 49 times, while her son was left alive and was later found clinging to his mother's body, repeating the words, "Wake up, Mummy." It was a horrific crime, and it led to a scandal in which police officers were found guilty of negligence. They spent too much time, money, and resources trying to frame an innocent man named Colin Stagg, which allowed the real culprit to commit more murders. Eventually, thanks to advances in DNA technology, Robert Napper, the real perpetrator, was identified and confined indefinitely to Broadmoor, a high-security psychiatric hospital. The judge described him as "a very dangerous man." What's more, Stagg ultimately received a public apology from the Metropolitan Police for their unfair conduct.
All this information (and more) can be found on news websites and Wikipedia. Does The Witness have anything new to add? It certainly creates the impression that it wants to justify its existence by dealing with the relationship between Alex (played by Jahsaiah Williams as a child and Max Fincham as a teenager) and his father, André Hanscombe (Jordan Bolger), after Rachel's death. However, what it ultimately does with this thread is flatten it into a depressing cliché in which Alex turns to drugs, street fights, and rowdiness because, apparently, that's what television writers think teenagers do when they have a traumatic past and a strained relationship with their parents. It's the kind of eye-rollingly outdated formula that has become far too common in mediocre movies and TV shows—it's also present in the new Cape Fear. Some filmmakers see Gen Z characters through the lens of comically exaggerated slang and quirks. Then there are others who send them down the path of booze and drugs with a "my life has been shit and my parents don't understand me" excuse simply to generate drama. Both approaches produce young characters who come across as ungrateful. To them, their decisions might make sense, but the filmmakers make no attempt to understand them. It's a problematic trope, and it's becoming increasingly common. It's an infuriatingly lazy shortcut.
Williams and Winckler don't try to get into Alex's headspace. To them, he's little more than a sulky troublemaker whose interests, as far as they're concerned, don't extend beyond vegetarianism. Does he like movies? Does he listen to music? What do he and his friends talk about when they're hanging out together? Does the Alex who remains in "one piece" and reaches adulthood think about going to college? What course does he want to pursue? The Witness doesn't want to be a witness to its characters' inner lives. Williams and Winckler are more than happy to place them on screen as mouthpieces, which becomes especially evident in the scene where André tells Alex about the police department's incompetence and the tip-off provided by Napper's mother. You can sense the show's eagerness to rush through all the necessary information. This is precisely what it does throughout its three episodes, which is why, rather than dramatizing events, it merely depicts and summarizes them through dialogue and brief moments such as the one in which an undercover officer meets Stagg as part of a long-running operation. We don't see the planning and preparation behind the mission. What we get are short exchanges between police officers and a handful of glimpses that make the show feel as though it's merely checking boxes.
The one scene that stands out in a show that's essentially the cinematic equivalent of the real-life incident's Wikipedia page comes in Episode 1, when the adults enlist Alex's help in constructing a picture of the culprit using dolls and puppets. The practicality of the process—the careful, step-by-step extraction of clues—commands your attention. Otherwise, everything else comes across as summarized rather than fleshed out, swiftly dispensed with rather than deliberated upon. If Williams and Winckler wanted to make viewers aware of the events surrounding the case, they succeeded. However, after a while, you begin to wonder what they want to say about the world—or about themselves—through this project. Yes, the police department screws up. Yes, not every child is safe from tragedy. But what was it about this specific case that spoke to Williams and Winckler strongly enough for them to make a Netflix series out of it? Given how artistically bankrupt the result feels, the show leaves little evidence of any artistic motivation beyond commercial considerations. They had the budget, they had a cast, they had the backing of a giant streaming service, and so they made this crime drama. That might just be the only logical explanation.
Final Score - [3/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times