BritBox Takes on 'A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story'

ITV announced it was commissioning a series on Ruth Ellis in mid-July 2023. The last woman to be executed by hanging in Britain, the real-life Ellis was a model and escort who rose to nightclub manager. Her popularity in the U.K. social scene peaked in the mid-1950s until her relationship with racing driver David Blakely ended in bloodshed and her conviction. Lucy Boynton (Why Didn't They Ask Evans?) was tapped to play the titular Ellis in the series, which at the time was under the working title of Ruth. Finally, we can update you with the new title, A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, which will come to BritBox in 2025.

Ellis shot and killed Blakely in public, outside The Magdala public house, on Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955, when she was just 28. She turned herself over to the police immediately. Though there was ample evidence Blakey abused Ellis for years leading up to the incident, she was tried for murder, not manslaughter, found guilty by a jury after all of 20 minutes of deliberations, and sentenced to death. Her execution became the tipping point in the fight to abolish the death penalty, though it took nearly a decade before it finally passed in 1964.

The new series is based on A Fine Day for Hanging: The Real Ruth Ellis Story by Carol Ann Lee and will argue that under today's laws, Ellis wouldn't have been tried for murder but would have been found innocent of manslaughter as well and walked out a free woman.