SDB's Forcening: The Murders at White House Farm
Not without interest, but not in need of six episodes, either
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
The night of August 6-7, 1985, Nevill and June Bamber were shot to death at their farmhouse at White House Farm; so were their adopted daughter, Sheila Caffell, and Sheila’s six-year-old twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas. Jeremy Bamber, June and Nevill’s adopted son, was the only surviving member of the couple’s family. “Jem” said he’d been at his home several miles away when the shooting took place, and was content to let a police theory dominate that said his sister — a diagnosed schizophrenic — murdered her family and then killed herself.
Suspicion soon shifted to Bamber, however, and while I don’t mean to spoil the outcome for anyone, you will end up Googling to see what happens, because…
The story
…is three times as long as it needs to be, and I don’t understand why. The Murders at White House Farm is cast flawlessly as far as resemblance to the real-life figures of the case, and pretty flawlessly as far as acting ability as well (more on that in a moment), and the production may have wanted to let its actors work — and that’s not a bad choice. Sometimes, the pleasure of a scripted take on a well-trodden crime story is what the cast decides to do with what can never be known, how they live in the spaces between the details and evidence we’ve all memorized and the interior moments we can’t possibly access. This was the chief selling point of both American Crime Story seasons to date; Sarah Paulson’s iteration of Marcia Clark’s journey during The People vs. OJ Simpson may not be black-letter law, but boy was it compelling circumstantially.