Responsible Child: When the facts come before the drama

The success of the Netflix series Adolescence, and my doubts as to how far it reflects reality, has put me in mind of the BBC television play Responsible Child from 2019. This showed how the legal system deals with a 12-year-boy who has helped his older brother murder their abusive stepfather.

Responsible Child was the first play directed by the BAFTA-winning documentary maker Nick Holt, who was interviewed at the time by Deadline:

Tell me how Responsible Child came about.

I was up in Scotland making The Murder Trial, probably for about 18 months in total, looking at various cases, and it was whilst I was up there that I saw a very young child, and I asked one of the lawyers, “Was that a witness?” She was incredibly young to be in a courtroom. And the sister of the accused, said, “No, actually that’s the accused.” 

I was quite taken aback by that. This child doesn’t look older than 10. And then I was told that actually, yes, there are trials for children of 10. And they’re put on trial as adults and they’re put on trial in front of juries, and they’re not part of the youth courts.

Then Holt came across the case of  Jerome and Joshua Ellis, who were 14 and 23 when they also killed their stepfather. The case was reported because the press overturned an injunction that banned them from naming either brother to protect the younger's anonymity:

And that’s what led me to being able to go to a trial and see one of these. It was extraordinary to see, and then I became very close to a legal team involved in that case, and started understanding all about what it’s like to work on these cases, what it’s like to work with young accused.

And he later says:

I’m no stranger to sitting through murder trials. I’ve sat through a great many in my time. But there was just something extraordinary seeing the focus of the entire room on a small child. There was just something so potent about the image of a child who could barely see over the witness stand, and subjected to examination, cross-examination.

And of course, you wonder about children, in general, is how much do they understand about what’s going on. How much of the case they understand, how much do they understand of what they’re saying, the consequences of what they’re saying, what’s being really asked for in what they’re saying? It’s an incredibly stressful situation and so, yes, it was extraordinary to see it first hand.

Holt also says that he told his story through a drama rather than a documentary because that's the only way you can bring one of these trials to the screen,

Responsible Child was screened just before Christmas 2019. It was widely praised and nominated for a BAFTA.

Then came the International Emmys. The play won its category and, remarkably, its young lead Billy Barratt* won Best Actor for a performance that was filmed just after this 12th birthday.  But even this was not enough to win Responsible Child a repeat.

* Trivia fans will be pleased to learn that Billy Barratt is the grandson of Shakin' Stevens (whose real name is Michael Barratt).