When filmmakers trample all over real-life stories you care about

There should be an ancient Chinese curse: May someone make a film of a real-life story you care about.

I went to a couple of open days at the Richard III dig before it was announced that they thought they had found him, and went to several academic events after his identity had been confirmed. I even filed past Richard's coffin to pay my respects, which was more than I did for Elizabeth II.

The whole episode was a marvellous example of interesting and involving the community in archaeology. I find I got quite emotional about the day Richard was reburied.

So we really didn't need Steve Coogan and his film to give us a false picture of these events.

I didn't see The Lost King because I knew it would annoy me, and I had already been annoyed by another film in the autumn 2022.

See How They Run was a murder mystery set in and around the record-breaking London run of Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap.

I have just written an article for Central Bylines on the play's roots in a real-life death – that of 12-year-old Dennis O'Neill on a farm in the Shropshire hills in 1945.

As I suspected, See How They Run used this story, but it contrived to end with a young man called Dennis being clubbed to death. He had been committing the murders as a protest against Christie's exploitation of his family's story.

In the review I posted after seeing it, I quoted the American film writer Gregory Mysogland:

Christie expresses sympathy for him but states that to not write about tragic topics would be to deny a part of who she is. This is an understandable viewpoint, but it's also the last word the film says on the issue, and as such is much too simplistic and one-sided. ...

Eventually, Christie herself kills Dennis by hitting him in the head with a shovel, comically going in for more blows before the others stop her. Although Henderson's manic performance is good enough to make this scene darkly funny on first viewing, upon reflection, it adds to the exploitation of the O'Neill's represented by Dennis' role. 

Making the character a murderous villain and then dismissing his legitimate argument with a wave of the hand is bad enough, but having him meet a violent death similar to the real Dennis's is cruel and immoral, not to mention completely against the ideas the film tries to bring up in relation to him.

Mysgoland was right. I could have done without this film too.