Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Claremont Murders’ On Acorn TV, A Drama About A Real-Life Serial Killer Case That Took Two Decades To Solve

Police dramas based on real cases like to concentrate on the fact that law enforcement is an imperfect science; detectives often fixate on the wrong theory or even the wrong person of interest because it or they fit a profile. A new two-part drama about an infamous serial killer case in Perth, Australia is an example of this.

THE CLAREMONT MURDERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man in a kimono takes a pair of red panties off a clothesline. He wraps it around his hand and walks into a house.

The Gist: “Valentine’s Day, 1988.” The man in the kimono goes into a woman’s room, stuffs something in her mouth and climbs on top of her. She manages to scream and fight him off, and he goes running, leaving the kimono in the yard.

“26 January, 1996.” Sarah Spiers (Hannah Penman) is getting ready for a night out in the Claremont neighborhood of Perth. She leaves the club around midnight and tries to find a cab. She walks to a nearby phone booth, calls for a cab, and waits. Then a car pulls up and she gets in. She’s not seen after that.

By the time the weekend is over, Sarah’s sister Amanda (Sophia Forrest) and their parents Don (Erik Thomson) and Carol (Kate Ritchie) are convinced something bad has happened to her. The police assign Detectives Bobbi McAllister (Laura Gordon) and Gavin Wyatt (Aaron Glenane) to the case, but the investigators are grasping at straws. Despite news coverage and a reward, all the Spiers family gets are bad tips from crackpots. They appeal to local reporter Alison Fan (Catherine Van-Davies) to keep Sarah in the news. Sarah continues to be missing as the months slip by.

“8 June, 1996.” Jane Rimmer (Liv Richardson) goes to the same club in Claremont, and, while looking for a cab outside, is met by a strange man that she leaves with. With Sarah still missing, the police start mobilizing a task force, but all they have to go on is the back of the man’s head on some CCTV footage and the fractured testimony of clubgoers who were under the influence that night. Det. McAllister takes the statement of a woman who was sexually assaulted the year before by a man who might have been connected to the case; she manages to get the detectives in charge of the task force to move on the evidence, but that also leads nowhere.

In August, Jane’s body is found, but she is so decomposed that it’s tough to determine what wounds killed her, and any DNA evidence that might have been left is too degraded to use. Meanwhile, Alison Fan is reporting on how tense things have gotten in the Claremont neighborhood, especially amongst young women who go to the various clubs there.

“St. Patrick’s Day, 1997.” Ciara Glennon (Ally Harris), who has been traveling overseas, comes home to Perth and goes out in Claremont with friends. She also ends up going missing. Her parents insist that she’s too savvy to get into a stranger’s car, but Fan and the police are both convinced she’s fallen victim to what they now think is a serial killer. Her body is found not long after her disappearance, with wounds that are similar, but not exactly the same as, the ones Jane had.

Eventually, a man named Lance Williams (Tom O’Sullivan), whose white car has been seen circling the neighborhood where the three women went missing, becomes a person of interest; Det. McAllister, serving as a decoy, gets in his car, and she’s convinced he’s going to do her harm before he’s stopped and arrested. But he repeatedly claims he didn’t take the three women, and there is no physical evidence tying him to the women. Police, however, aren’t convinced, and they watch his house and track his car for what turns out to be years. By 2000, the task force has shrunk down to Det. Wyatt and a few others. Sarah is still missing, and the police are no closer to finding the killer.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Despite being based on a true case, the way The Claremont Murders is structured feels very procedural, along the lines of Criminal Record or Sherwood.

Our Take: Based on two books about the Claremont serial murder case, The Claremont Murders, written by Justin Monjo and Michaeley O’Brien, pretty much goes for a straightforward storytelling method, proceeding from one event to the next. There’s a good reason for that; these murders confounded police for over 20 years, with the ultimate perpetrator, Bradley Robert Edwards, not being arrested until 2018.

The first episode covers the initial disappearances and murders, along with law enforcement’s insistence on Williams being the killer, and the second episode shows a new group of detectives picking up the case in the 2010s. But what’s being shown is essentially the police flailing about and guessing at every turn, focusing on the wrong man simply because he fit a profile. There isn’t much in the way of dramatic momentum because of that, which means that the writers have to fill that momentum in other not so great ways.

For instance, there seems to be a burgeoning attraction between McAllister and Wyatt that goes nowhere, because she gets transferred out of homicide shortly after Williams is arrested. We’re not even sure why it’s there, other than giving the writers an excuse to have a dramatic moment between the two when McAllister decides to go undercover as one of the decoys trying to flush out Williams.

There also seems to be a concentration on both Sarah Spiers’ parents as well as Alison Fan’s involvement in the case. Speirs’ parents are understandable, given that Sarah was never found, and the details of her case were a little different than what happened to the other two women. There needs to be a throughline of at least one family suffering through the decades of the police not being able to solve the case. But, while Fan is a real figure who reported on the Claremont cases, we also see her family life and how her son and his friends relate to the case. Again, it feels like mostly filler, in an effort to make what’s essentially a two-hour movie into a three-hour micro-series.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: We see Edwards (Ryan Johnson), the real killer, standing on the end of a dock, holding the sunflower keychain Jane Spiers had when she went missing. He throws it in the water, then turns back to join his family.

Sleeper Star: We did like Catherine Van-Davies as Alison Fan, especially in a scene where she interviews Williams, because she holds herself like a late-’90s news reporter.

Most Pilot-y Line: Wyatt tells a bad dad joke to McAllister as they stake out Williams; it’s one of the many non sequiturs that feel like filler instead of dialogue meant to advance the plot.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While The Claremont Murders feels a bit too long and has a lot of filler, it’s still a good illustration of how law enforcement can get fixated on a person of interest in a case, ignoring all evidence that they have the wrong person.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.