This shocking true-crime British drama is harrowing, but deserves to be seen

This drama is based on a true crime, but it’s in stark contrast to many in the genre; this is not your Netflix-style, slightly exploitative crime drama. Written by BAFTA-winning British writer and producer Jeff Pope, who has a background in sensitively handed true-crime dramatisations – most recently 2022’s The Walk-In, about the infiltration of a British far-right extremist group, and 2023’s The Reckoning, about predator Jimmy Savile – Believe Me will shock even those familiar with the crimes of John Worboys. Presently serving a life sentence, Worboys was a black cab driver in London who targeted women on their own outside clubs and bars between 2000 and 2008.

After picking them up, often offering to drive them home for free, he’d tell them he’d had a win at the casino, and offer them a plastic cup of champagne to “help him celebrate”. The drinks were spiked with tranquillisers, and once his passengers became drowsy, he would pull over and assault them. He’d then drop them outside their houses and even, in one case, took a woman to hospital, brazenly playing the role of kindly cabbie assisting a drunken woman.

While the series shows the preludes to a handful of these attacks, it’s done so with restraint; there’s nothing exploitative. While Worboys was eventually convicted of 23 criminal offences against 16 women (even though the real numbers are thought to be much, much higher; after ITV screened this series in May, new victims came forward), Believe Me focuses on three of the women he preyed on, who were instrumental in bringing him to justice. The crimes are only part of this story; the Metropolitan Police department’s extraordinary failures are almost as shocking as the assaults themselves.

The first episode focuses on Sarah (pseudonyms are used), played by Slow Horses’ Aimee-Ffion Edwards, who gets into a black cab after celebrating a friend’s birthday. It’s worth noting that before the rise of Uber, licensed black cabs were considered the safest way to get home in London, unlike the city’s minicabs. Played with queasy menace by Daniel Mays (who often plays creepy villains, but after this role reportedly had to have therapy), Worboys pesters Sarah to drink the champagne once she gets in his cab.

She then wakes up in hospital with no memory of how she got there – and finds her tights are torn, and she’s covered in bruises. She’s told curtly by police that she’d obviously had a big night, and was “lucky” her cab driver brought her to the hospital. But that’s just the beginning of her ghastly treatment.

Sarah, and a second victim the series focuses on, Laila (Aasiya Shah), are met with open disdain and incredulity when they report their assaults. The questions they are asked are gobsmacking: “What type of woman would you describe yourself as?“, “Do you think you just forgot that you first got into a minicab?”

and even, “Do you usually wear red nail polish?” Even as multiple women report similar situations, their cases are routinely dismissed, and it takes years before the police realise there’s a pattern. The second half focuses on the efforts of Sarah, Laila and Carrie Symonds (Industry’s Miriam Petche), who went on to become the wife of former British prime minister Boris Johnson, as they seek proper justice.

Eventually, their lobbying results in a precedent for police liability. Unlike many crime dramatisations, more screen time is given over to the aftermath rather than the tawdry crimes themselves; Worboys is given the least amount of spotlight and the women are depicted as survivors rather than victims – it’s a refreshing change. At just four episodes, the storytelling is taut, smartly written and superbly acted; each of the women inhabit their respective characters – the new mum on her first night out after a baby; the shy first-year college student and smart young Conservative – convincingly.

Believe Me is not easy viewing. But it’s an eye-opening insight into an extraordinary (very recent) history of police incompetence and misogyny, and is guaranteed to shock you. Believe Me airs on Sundays at 9.

20pm on ABC and is now streaming on ABC iview. You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more.

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