4 out of 5

Directed by: John Strong

A nice and lean based-on-true-events TV 2-parter, ‘Code of a Killer’ is history done right, with elements dramatized and flourished just enough to give us a feeling for the real people fueling their on-screen representations but the story maintained in a tapered and focused fashion such as to ditch sub-plots in favor of our core tale.  UK TV (or non-American TV in general) has long been the example of a flexible episode structure for its television – 6 episodes, 8 episodes, 10, etc. – a trend which the US is finally picking up on, and director John Strong and writer Michael Compton have some good experience to draw upon for this type of focus.  The combo seems especially fruitful, though, as Compton’s occasionally stalling script is benefited by Strong’s stable scene setting, while, at the same time, this stability could trend toward boredom if Compton had had more room to dress things up unnecessarily.  At the top of the chart of contributors though, is the continually amazing and miraculously flexible John Simm, here taking the lead as teacher and scientist Alec Jeffreys, father of DNA fingerprinting, and the soulful David Threlfall as DCS David Baker, who takes a risk to employ Jeffreys’ work in (assuming the history is accurate) the first documented use of DNA bloodwork to catch a rapist and murderer.  ‘Code of a Killer’ mainly documents the speculation facing the police in employing such a method, and how Alec’s enigmatic defense of it – and Baker’s belief in it – kept it going despite pressure for immediate results, or a less expensive process.  The case is treated with all due seriousness, and though it essentially falls to the background for detailing the rise of bloodwork (which Jeffreys intended for research purposes initially, not crime work, giving his character – as represented by Sim, anyway – a very honorable and humble persona), because the struggles with the case echo Alec’s briefly covered hit-and-miss attempts to bring his DNA theories to fruition, ‘Code’ indirectly gives immense weight to the crimes and its resolution, showing the mixture of luck and skill and delays of outside influence that all factor in to… well, most things.  In this heavy environment, Strong and Compton wisely choose not to weigh it down with too much excess, but we do witness the strain on Alec’s personal life and some butting heads on the side of the law; as mentioned, just enough for a dose of reality.  However, there’s not enough room to really stuff the science into this, so it feels a bit pedantic and repetitive with Jeffreys’ same repeated shtick as to how DNA works.  I’m praising the leanness of the show, but an episode dedicated to the build-up to his discovery would have been fascinating, and perhaps bolstered this aspect.  Still, ‘true story’ bits are often exercises in tropes, and while at a high level Code of a Killer hits those marks, it never feels like it’s on auto-pilot thanks to smart construction by its writer and director and impressive performances from the leads.