Peter McGinn
May 10, 2020
7/10
My overall feeling is that this documentary, though it resolves nothing ultimately, does the best it can with what it has available to them. It presents a sequence of events that is perhaps helpeful to those who only became aware of the bumps in the story, the times it hit the headlines. It seems it focuses less on Barrymore and a bit more on the victim, Stuart Lubbock.
As an American, the story rather naturally reminds me of the JonBenet Ramsey case, where the crime scene investigation was also bungled by the police first on the scene. And the small circle of party guests are either innocently telling the unhelpful truth, or else one or more are sticking to their lie like glue. And in both cases, wealthy persons are suspects (though the Ramseys weren’t full on celebrities until the unwanted attention after JonBenet’s murder). And neither case is ever solved. The rich are in fact different and the justice system reflects that. (I am not inferring that Barrymore is guilty, just that, except for the tabloid maelstrom, his money shielded him in ways that wouldn’t be open to you or me.)
I have watched a lot of British tv, but not game shows or other programs with presenters, so Barrymore was unknown to me, and therefore this story was of little interest to me. It was just good enough for me to keep it on, letting it wash over me as I did something else. It will be of more interest to British viewers, I assume. But it is well made, I can say that much. Perhaps the most revealing part to me is when the victim’s father spends an hour with Barrymore, years after the fact, and admits they were lost in chatter and laughter, small talk, he calls it. They barely touched upon the death of his son. He was played, he said, by Barrymore. But really he was played by the colt of celebrity and fame.