Little Boy Blue (2017)

2017 | UK | Jeff Pope | ★★★★

Jeff Pope's horrific, crushingly sad Little Boy Blue is a nuanced, unsensational account of a tragic real-life murder case starring Stephen Graham, featuring well-drawn characters, unrushed plotting, and a strong sense of time and place.

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"Based on a true story that shocked a nation, this powerful four-part factual drama, from BAFTA winning writer and executive producer Jeff Pope (Appropriate Adult, The Widower), centres on the devastating impact on a city of an innocent child’s murder amid a wave of gang violence. In August 2007, while walking home from football practice in his England kit, 11-year-old Rhys Jones was unwittingly caught in the crossfire of a gang war. Shot in the neck outside the Fir Tree pub in Liverpool’s Croxteth, he died in his mother’s arms." ITV