On 'Des' (2020) and Gerard Johnson's 'Tony' (2009)

by Elena Lazic

I have been watching a lot of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit these past few weeks, and in that show, the cops essentially do not care about why the perps (SVU talk for “perpetrators”) do what they do; all they care about is stopping them. This is obviously not a good way to deal with the societal and economic conditions which lead some to crime, but in a TV landscape morbidly fascinated by criminals, a procedural where they are not represented as in any way mysterious or interesting is rather welcome. This intense consumption of SVU could explain why it took me a while to realise how unusual the focus of the show Des was. 

As some of you may already know, I am fascinated not so much by serial killers themselves as I am by the way we talk about them (I’ve written about this a few times). Watching Des, I was struck by the way this show ostensibly about UK serial killer Dennis Nilsen had so little interest in who he was, what “made him tick,” where he came from and what his existence said about the UK in the 1970s and 1980s. In a way, it was quite refreshing, since the question behind all these things usually explored in fiction and non-fiction about serial killers — namely, “Why did he do this?” — can never be given a fully satisfying answer, and more often than not leads to the mythification of the killer, at the expense of the victims and their mourning families.