'The Sixth Commandment': A True Crime Story About Loneliness & Isolation

As a genre, true crime is often focused on the worst of humanity. It's usually why people tune in, after all. We're both appalled and fascinated by the terrible deeds of the darkest people among us, and far too often we tell the stories of their crimes from the wrong direction. Truth and dignity are often sacrificed on the altar of sensationalism and victims are often portrayed as little more than a means to an end, a vehicle by which we can witness the macabre and monstrous for ourselves.

American audiences may not be terribly familiar with the story of Ben Fields, a charismatic student who drugged, gaslit, and finally murdered university lecturer and novelist Peter Farquhar in Buckinghamshire in 2015. (And attempted to do the same to his neighbor, Ann Moore-Martin.) It's an awful story of exploitation, loneliness, and deceit that's brought sensitively and heartbreakingly to life in the new Britbox series The Sixth Commandment, a four-part true crime drama that does us all the favor of refusing to pretend Fields is anything other than what he was — a monster.

Instead, the show delicately and compassionately explores the stories of Fields's victims, casting both Moore-Martin and Farquhar as deserving of sympathy rather than ridicule and embracing the sincerity of their desire for genuine connection. This isn't a story about how two elderly people were dumb enough to fall for a scam that seems obvious to those watching from the outside. It's a about how much we all long for love and companionship, no matter how old or well off we are.