Niamh Algar puts in a phenomenal performance in this four-parter about the controversial undercover police operation which followed Nickell’s death, and events that beggar belief
It is an indicator of almost everything that was wrong with the Rachel Nickell murder investigation that I could not, on hearing of a drama being made about the case, remember if anyone had ever been found guilty. But I remembered the name and face of Colin Stagg as clearly as I remembered that of Nickell. He was the lonely oddball who fitted the profile drawn up by forensic psychologist Paul Britton, and whom the police relentlessly pursued as their prime suspect. An undercover female officer, codenamed “Lizzie James”, was sent to befriend Stagg (or entrap him, as was the view of the judge who threw out the case when it reached trial). Despite the absence of evidence against him, he was found guilty in the court of public opinion and treated accordingly for the next 16 years, until a cold case review led to Robert Napper being convicted of the manslaughter of Nickell.
Deceit (Channel 4), written by Emilia di Girolamo, and based on extensive research and interviews, tells the story of the honeytrap operation and the officer at the centre of it. Niamh Algar gives a phenomenal performance as Lizzie James/Sadie Byrne (not the officer’s real name, as her identity is still protected by court order), a performance layered with certainty and doubt as the officer’s aptitude is stretched to its limit on the most daunting of assignments. Algar shows Byrne’s desire to prove herself in a casually and systemically sexist workplace, which both complements and complicates her desire for justice. You believe and understand her character entirely as, following a plan designed by Britton (Eddie Marsan), Byrne befriends Stagg and inches along the line between encouragement and entrapment. Sion Daniel Young as Stagg does an equally remarkable job – letting all of the man’s unsettling unsavouriness show but never losing touch with his humanity. Our sympathies – or at least enough of them – stay with him to the end.