Great Crimes and Trials
BBC documentary series reconstructing renowned crimes using archival material.
Great Crimes and Trials, also known as Great Crimes and Trials of the Twentieth Century, is a BBC documentary series broadcast between 1993 and 1997. The show reconstructs well-known criminal cases using archive footage, focusing on the offender’s motivations, the crime itself, the subsequent investigation, and the court proceedings. Actor Robert Powell provides the narration for each episode.
The series originally aired on Tuesday afternoons on BBC1 in the UK and on the A&E Network in the United States. During the mid-to-late 2000s, it was rebroadcast on weekdays in the UK on the Crime & Investigation Network. In Russia, the series began airing on the TV-6 channel in autumn 2000.
In 2011, Investigation Discovery revived the series with Alisdair Simpson as narrator, covering notorious cases from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This reboot ran for a single season of 20 episodes.
A companion book, written by Paul Begg and Martin Fido, was published by Carlton Books in late 1993. It contains 28 true crime cases, including 25 from the first series (such as The Hammersmith Murders), one case later featured in the third series (Bentley and Craig), and two cases never covered by the programme (The Krays and The Moors Murders).
Multiple collections of the series have been released on VHS and DVD. Columbia Tristar issued the first and second series on video in 1997, and the first series on DVD in 2005. Network DVD released the third series on DVD in 2011. In the US, Sony released two collections in 2013 as part of its “Sony Choice Collection” burn-on-demand DVD-R line: *Great Crimes And Trials of the 20th Century, Volume 1: Gruesome California* (six episodes about crimes in California) and *Volume 2: The Original Gangstas* (five episodes focused on mob and gangster cases).
Quick Facts
- Genre
- Documentary
- Creator
- Philip Nugus and Johnathan Martin (Nugus/Martin Productions LTD)
- Starring
- Robert Powell
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Num Episodes
- 78
- Runtime
- 30 minutes
- Network
- BBC2
- First Aired
- 1993-11-02
- Last Aired
- 1996-07-17
- Num Series
- 3
Facts from the source article.
Lore & Background
The series originally broadcast on Tuesday afternoons on BBC1 in the United Kingdom and in the United States on the A&E Network. In the mid-late 2000s, it was repeated on weekdays in the United Kingdom on the Crime & Investigation Network. The broadcast also began on Russian TV-6 channel in the fall 2000. A book to accompany the series was published by Carlton Books in late 1993, written by Paul Begg and Martin Fido, comprising twenty-eight true crime cases, including twenty-five from series one, one from series three, and two that were never featured on the programme.
Reader's Guide
Great Crimes and Trials is significant as a BBC documentary series that brought historical true crime cases to a broad audience through archival footage and narration by Robert Powell. Its three series (1993–1996) established a template for later true crime documentaries. The series was rebooted in 2011 by Investigation Discovery, narrated by Alisdair Simpson, with one season of 26 episodes covering late 20th and early 21st century cases. Home media releases include VHS and DVD collections, with US burn-on-demand DVD-Rs released by Sony in 2013. The accompanying book by Begg and Fido further extended the series' reach, profiling cases from the show and others not featured. The series remains a reference point for documentary true crime programming.
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