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“Why did my son die?” The question is asked to an official of Scotland Yard by the mourning mother of Jean Charles de Menezes in the new exhausting drama of Disney + Suspicious. The 27 -year -old Brazilian was killed by London metropolitan police in July 2005 after being wrongly identified as an alleged terrorist. The answer – held of the family of the victim and the British public following the murder – is that of Menezes did not to have die. His death was horribly avoidable and caused by serious operational failures.
This four -part series, written and created by Jeff Pope, begins two weeks before the tragedy, following the 7/7 attacks in London. The Met, led by the commissioner concerned with the image Ian Blair (Conleth Hill), is desperate to prove that he can protect a frightening city. However, two weeks later, the Islamist extremists attempted a copy attack on the capital, to be thwarted by defective detonators. The preparation of Scotland Yard in again exposed, puts it in accordance with its pursuit of potential bombers and higher officers discuss the use of “extreme action” if necessary.
An investigation leads the police to a building in southern London, of which a young man emerges. His behavior, as he is on the tail en route to Stockwell station, is considered nervous by his supervisors; Its appearance is described in a diverse way as white, Mongolian and North African while the deviations with the real target are noted. Despite the lack of positive identification and in the midst of a frenzy of contradictory information, Commander Cressida Dick (Emily Mortimer) orders an armed unit to follow the suspect in the tube. This is where the electrician is killed seven times in the head.
The series is committed to both and enrages when it accumulates to the fatal incident, pulling concentration along the way towards the many cases of haste and hesitation which lead to the murder of an innocent civilian. But there are also scenes from the point of view of Menezes which offer an overview of the cruelly truncated life of a decent man (Edison Alcaide). The brutally graphic representation of the shooting, on the other hand, accentuates the human cost of this procedural calamity.
If the first half of the program concerns institutional chaos, the last two episodes concern the concerted efforts of the MET to control the story. Rather than assuming responsibility, we see superior personalities trying to contain the truth, crop or excuse the rabougts in the judgment, and even insidiously to move the guilt to Menezes himself. Parasitic suggestions that he had been evasive or aggressive before the shooting – or even intoxicated – drowned calls for transparency by conscientious assistant commissioner Brian Paddick (Russell Tovey), who notices contradictions between witnesses and met with declarations.
Suspicious usually overexploiting moments of laborious scripts. But some clumsy imagined scenes do not do much to alleviate the impact of the realities of in-depth and unwavering history in history. By highlighting MET errors and ethical abdications, the series has already launched a national dialogue on the responsibility of the police. And by dissipating the myths that have long tarnished the reputation of De Menezes, it is to be hoped for a certain closure to the family.
★★★★ ☆
On Disney + now