Sheridan Smith's performance The Moorside by Jim Shelley
The Moorside asked some intriguing, audacious, questions about the public’s perception of notorious hate figure Karen Matthews - whether ill-informed, even unjust.
But ultimately it didn’t deliver enough evidence to answer them, or any to be honest.
Even the central figures who were shown suggesting that there was more to her involvement in the faked abduction of her daughter Shannon than Matthews was telling them were also left being uncertain.
The Moorside asked some intriguing, audacious, questions about the public’s perception of notorious hate figure Karen Matthews
So in the end was the writer. Neil McKay had examined the idea that both Myra Hindley and Rose West were satellites of more culpable/heinous dominant males in previous dramas See No Evil and Appropriate Adult and seemed intent on fitting Matthews’ story into the same theory.
But he never got close to corroborating his provocative premise that Matthews merited a more compassionate, considered, portrayal than the vile version that has become popular legend. Or rather, unpopular…
The Moorside may have provided us with certain (sympathetic) insights into Karen Matthews’ character and the 2008 case that we had forgotten or didn’t know but the lack of any (new) convincing, substantial, proof ensured McKay’s alternative view only amounted to speculation.
Sheridan Smith and Sian Brooke (pictured) were exceptional as Julie Bushby and Natalie Brown, two neighbours taking differing views of Matthews’ behaviour/guilt
In fact his flagrant omission of several vital details in the trial meant McKay’s hypothesis was arguably more distorted than the image he was challenging.
The programme certainly didn’t comply with the judgement by police at the time that Karen Matthews was ‘pure evil.’ A jury had found her guilty but McKay seemed strangely, stubbornly, reluctant to incorporate even some of the reasons why.
For instance a neighbour from the Moorside estate in Dewsbury was shown revealing only that officers had discovered Shannon ‘hidden in the base of a divan bed.’
Neil McKay never got close to corroborating his provocative premise that Matthews merited a more compassionate, considered, portrayal than the vile version that has become legend
This was true, but at no point in the two-part programme had we seen any of the suffering the nine year-old endured during her 24-day ordeal, during which she was often tethered to a roof beam by an elasticated strap with a noose on the end. Unlike us, the court heard that Shannon was drugged with temazepam to subdue her, as she allegedly had been by Karen Matthews for as long as 20 months before her ‘disappearance.’
When asked if she wanted to go home to her mother, Shannon unsurprisingly, simply said: ‘No.’
McKay might maintain that The Moorside wasn’t about the trial and, even though it was about the case and the degree to which Matthews was culpable, in part that was true. As the title indicated, it was about ‘the community’ – how Matthews’ friends, family, and neighbours rallied together when Shannon went ‘missing’, celebrated when she was found, and then turned on Karen Matthews and each other when the news that the abduction had been faked came out.
McKay might maintain that The Moorside wasn’t about the trial and, even though it was about the case and the degree to which Matthews was culpable, in part that was true
The quality of the acting alone made The Moorside worth watching whatever you thought of McKay’s interpretation of Karen Matthews as more a victim than the villain.
Sheridan Smith and Sian Brooke were exceptional as Julie Bushby and Natalie Brown, two neighbours taking differing views of Matthews’ behaviour/guilt.
Gemma Whelan (Yara Greyjoy in Game Of Thrones) was remarkable, embodying Matthews’ haggard pallor and shambling, oafish, detachment with eerie accuracy.
The police did not consider Karen Matthews mentally capable of maintaining a new identity when she was released on licence in 2012 having served half of her eight year sentence for perverting the cause of justice and ‘wilfully neglecting or abandoning her child in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or injury.’
When the police finally found Shannon, Matthews’ reaction was just, DC Freeman (played by Siobhan Finneran pictured) said, ‘sort of blank.
So her almost child-like sense of naivety here was utterly convincing but confusing. How she had managed to maintain the pretence that Shannon had gone missing – in front of her friends and family, the police and the public glare – while knowing where she was all along was never explained or made sense.
Michael Donovan, her accomplice and the man who had kept Shannon in his house, often hidden under the divan, was also technically ‘mentally impaired’ with an IQ of only 74.
Matthews’ staunchest ally, community campaigner, Julie Bushby (Sheridan Smith) had a point when she said to the detective investigating the case: ‘Karen and Donovan are too thick to have come up with this by themselves aren’t they?’
‘I’d have to agree,’ DC Freeman muttered.
Donovan claimed that the plot to fake the abduction and split the reward money had been Matthews’ idea, telling the police: ‘she asked me to look after Shannon and said if I didn’t do it she’d set three lads on me.’
Matthews meanwhile (eventually) insisted the scheme hadn’t been about the money but was a botched attempt to get away from her boyfriend Craig Meehan, who police subsequently arrested for possession of child pornography
Matthews meanwhile (eventually) insisted the scheme hadn’t been about the money but was a botched attempt to get away from her boyfriend Craig Meehan, who police subsequently arrested for possession of child pornography.
Why Matthews didn’t give her friends or the police this defence during the three weeks Shannon was ‘missing’ – and only eventually offered it under cross-examination by Bushby and Brown (the estate’s ‘Cagney & Lacey’) wasn’t clear – unless she had been absolutely complicit all along of course.
Another theory – that someone else was using Matthews to front the abduction racket because she had no previous criminal record – was mentioned but never elaborated on.
‘It’s always the same !’ Matthews wailed tearfully (several times). ‘It’s always me that people take it out on. I get bullied and pushed around and I’m sick of it !’
She was, as Julie Bushby testified, ‘damaged.’
‘She’s been used and abused since childhood, mostly by men. She doesn’t understand that sex isn’t the same thing as love or affection, which is what she really wanted.’
Donovan claimed that the plot to fake the abduction and split the reward money had been Matthews’ idea, telling the police: ‘she asked me to look after Shannon and said if I didn’t do it she’d set three lads on me.’
Then again, Matthews had changed her version of events several times and lied repeatedly, even to those supporting her.
‘You have told the truth haven’t you?’ Julie implored. ‘You wouldn’t lie to the police? Or to us?’
‘No of course not ! I would never lie to you !’ Matthews cried, even as she was – about Shannon’s whereabouts, knowing Michael Donovan, or that Meehan was a paedophile.
When the police finally found Shannon, Matthews’ reaction was just, DC Freeman said, ‘sort of blank.’
Whatever McKay’s stance, your heart went out to Julie Bushby more than Matthews. Watching her organise the community’s campaign to look for Shannon, support Karen Matthews in particular, and defend the image of the estate while knowing the eventual reality was like a terrible sick joke we were all in on.
Whatever McKay’s stance, your heart went out to Julie Bushby more than Matthews
Even after the trial she stuck by Matthews, even when in prison she was still lying to her.
‘How can I say it’s alright after everything you’ve done to Shannon?’ she complained. ‘It should be her forgiveness you’re looking for !’
‘I know I’m bad, weak !’ Matthews pleaded. ‘But I know that somewhere inside me there’s someone that could be strong, who knows right from wrong. But I can’t seem to be that person.’
This made The Moorside ultimately a variation of the old adage ‘if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck’
Like his dramas about Myra Hindley and Rose West, McKay seemed to have gone to almost perverse lengths to find an alternative view and not just accept the obvious.
This made The Moorside ultimately a variation of the old adage ‘if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck.’
McKay wouldn’t have it, but in Karen Matthews’ case it was: if she looked like a mother who had faked her daughter’s abduction, lied like a mother who had faked her daughter’s abduction, and even admitted she was a mother who had faked her daughter’s abduction, then that is what she probably was.