Anybody's Nightmare (2001)

Directed by

Tristram Powell

Genre

trial film

Country

United Kingdom

Runtime

1h 37m

Rating

5.8 of 10 from 5 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This film tells the true story of a music teacher wrongly convicted of murder. It follows her children's efforts to prove her innocence after she is sent to prison. The film shows the trial and her long fight to overturn the conviction.

tensegrippingfactualemotionalslow-burnserioussuspensefultragic

What happens

Anybody's Nightmare is a British television crime drama, based on the true story of the imprisonment of Sheila Bowler, that was broadcast on ITV on 7 October 2001. Patricia Routledge starred as Bowler, a 62-year-old music teacher who in 1993 was wrongly arrested, tried and convicted for the murder of her husband's 89-year-old aunt Florence Jackson, who in 1992 had drowned in the River Brede in East Sussex. The film chronicles the investigation and trial, and her subsequent four years' detention in Holloway Prison and Bullwood Hall Prison before her successful appeal in 1998. The film depicts the quest for justice undertaken by Sheila's children, Simon (Thomas Arnold) and Jane (Georgina Sutcliffe), who were helped by a friend of the family, Angela Devlin (Nicola Redmond); Devlin's book on the case, published in 1998, was the basis for the film. The cast includes David Calder as prosecution barrister Anthony Glass QC, Malcolm Sinclair as Nicholas Purnell QC, and William Armstrong as Jeremy Roberts QC, Bowler's defence lawyers. The initial broadcast of the film drew 9.11 million viewers. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

• Student Seduction (2003)
• Hostile Witness (1968)
• Kasoor (2001)
• Term of Trial (1962)
• Adhipathi (2001)
• I Am Sam (2001)
• Take My Life (1947)
• In the Name of the Father (1993)