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Short summary

The story about the murder of an 11-year-old boy, Rhys Jones in Croxteth, Liverpool, in 2007 and his parents, Melanie's and Steve's ordeal, and how Rhys's murderer and associates were eventually brought to justice.

When Stephen Graham is chatting with the Chief of Police and she asks him about how he takes his coffee, he declines sugar and says "I'm sweet enough". Stephen Graham was in Snatch with Alan Ford who plays bricktop who also says "[...] I'm sweet enough." about taking sugar.

Sean Mercer, who was given a life sentence in 2007 for killing Rhys Jones, is reportedly going to sue the makers of the ITV show Little Boy Blue.

User reviews


  • comment
    • Author: Acrobat
    Pretty much every British person watching this already knows what's going to happen... but you'll still be hootin' and a hollerin' as events unfold and the journey to justice is completed. The writing, acting and everything else about this 4-part TV docu-drama is spot on. If you're not familiar with the story you're going to enjoy this even more.

    In 2007 an 11-year-old Rhys Jones was walking home from footy practice. As he cut through a pub car-park to get home the boy was fatally shot by a teenage gang member. About eight months later the police finally get their man and this is the story of how it happened.

    The writer (Oscar nominee Jeff Pope) has chosen to follow the facts of the case and not allow the emotions of the story to get the better of him. If you're binge- watching this it's three hours long and not a minute is wasted.

    As we're watching the story unfold through all the characters on both sides of the law, it's easy to forget that we're looking at something that is very close to what actually happened.

    These kinds of 'stories' are the staple of 'conveyer-belt' fictional police procedurals, almost all of which fall well short of this mesmerizing drama. It's as good as 2016's "In Plain Sight" which was another, similar TV 'docu-drama' about the detection and pursuit of a killer.

    This is top notch television and I hope the victim's family approves of the way their story has been handled. They had a hand in helping to re-tell their side of this horrible and senseless tragedy so I strongly suspect that they do.

    Here's some trivia... Apart from the actual shooting, the drama was filmed in and around Liverpool. The funeral was filmed in the Anglican Cathedral and the minute's applause was filmed during half-time of a match played at Goodison Park. The case itself was filmed at Liverpool Crown Court inside the courtroom where the original trial took place. Pretty spooky, eh?

    Excellent and captivating television - proving that British TV CAN do it when they want to!
  • comment
    • Author: blodrayne
    This is absolutely heart braking to watch, I defy anybody to watch this without shedding a tear. Based on the tragic real life events of young Rhys Jones, and his horrific and tragic murder. I understand that the parents of young Rhys were involved in the production of this drama, and I think that definitely helps with the grit and realism of the show, it doesn't feel like it's been sensationalised at any point, it feels very realistic.

    Fantastic performances all round, I have forever been a fan of Stephen Graham, but he has gone up a notch with this, he's proved what an incredibly powerful actor he is.

    It's tough viewing, and I've watched every episode in tears, but it's a story that is worth seeing, what that poor family went through. The scenes in Goodison Park are among the most powerful I've seen in years.

    9/10
  • comment
    • Author: Gribandis
    STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

    In August 2007, in the car park of The Fir Tree pub in Croxteth, Liverpool, eleven year old Rhys Jones, who was on his way home from football practice, became the most innocent of casualties in a local gang rivalry, dying after being accidentally shot by a bullet meant for someone else. On the eve of promotion, Detective Superintendent Dave Kelly (Stephen Graham) is assigned to lead the investigation into Rhys's death that comes to have a far more profound effect on his professional and home life than he could have imagined. Despite his dogged determination to get justice for Rhys and his parents Mel (Sinead Keenan) and Steve (Brian F.O' Byrne), Kelly encounters a wall of silence from a local community living in fear of the gangs and the repercussions of being labelled a 'grass.'

    Ten years on from the case that this TV drama is based on, ITV have chosen to make it into a three part drama detailing the case and how events panned out. There's certainly a lot of meat on the bones to work with, and the film is careful not to sensationalise anything, and tell the case in a sensitive and effecting way. Aside from the already horrifying death of a child, the case grabbed the nations attention also by highlighting what may well be a commonplace truth around the country, of normal, decent, respectable people living alongside those who live by their own rules with no intention of living honestly, and the shocking consequences of what happens when these two worlds sometimes inevitably collide.

    Although he feels a little too much like the 'go to' guy for this part, it can also be said that there was no better person for the lead role than Graham, with his natural Scouse background and pretty realistic physical resemblance to the real Dave Kelly. He fits the part pretty effortlessly, but still turns in a reliably great performance, as an increasingly seasoned detective who feels personally affronted by the crime he is investigating, unable to let it go due to the sheer outrageousness and senselessness of it, young men whose need to belong and be part of armies who are willing to endanger and take life for something as stupid as an area code. He is complimented by Keenan and O'Byrne as Rhy's grieving parents, O'Byrne bringing a quiet, bottled up angst as the father, with Keenan an emotional torrent as the mother.

    During the film, Mel takes exception to Rhys being described as being 'in the wrong place at the wrong time.' It's a commonly thrown around soundbite, that is rather unintentionally thoughtless in its use. A very lawful world and a very uncivilised world do coexist by each other very unknowingly, and that world can sometimes reach up and bite with the most tragic of results. But it should always be that world that never has any place or any time, rather than the decent one. ****
  • comment
    • Author: GWEZJ
    Few people in the United Kingdom will not have heard of the murder of Rhys Jones, an eleven-year-old boy from a middle-class family in Liverpool killed unintentionally by 16-year-old Sean Mercer, a low- level drug dealer who fired a revolver at two rival gang members over a postcode.

    It was the innocence of Rhys, a promising child with aspirations of playing for Everton Football Club that brought the attention of the national media on the case. The police were under tremendous pressure to bring the killer and those who supplied the gun to justice while the gang did their best to intimidate potential witnesses and pass off the murder onto a completely innocent party. This superb four-part drama, written by Jeff Pope tells the story of how those involved in both the murder and the concealing of the evidence were eventually brought to trial and the impact that Rhys death had on his parents, the investigating officers, and the local community. Bring the remorseless murderer to trial proved a complex issue, with two innocent families court in the middle of the lies of his alibi.

    The drama follows three narrative strands - The witness who was forced to hide the gun (an excellent performance from relative newcomer Michael Moran) and the family whose fragile son (An appropriately vulnerable performance from Nathan Clark-Smith) Rhys Parents (Sinead Keenan in her best ever performance as the Mum and Brian F O'Bryne finally getting the sort of meaty role he deserves) and the police investigation team led by Detective Dave Kelly (Stephen Graham whose versatility continues to expand with every performance) and DCI Mark Guinness (The always superb Stephen Walters in a very grounded role)

    Through these three narratives, we see the extreme pressures everyone was under both to stay in a wall of silence or break the case and bring the killers of Rhys to justice. One of the reasons this drama works so well is because of the generous four episodes, which gives adequate screen time to convey the truthfulness of each characters journey and the actor's performances which makes for a stronger production. It is good to see ITV drama giving this sort of material the running time that it so richly deserves.

    All the cast here doing a fantastic job including those portraying murderer Mercer his accomplices but the real stand out performance for me was that of the conflicted Kevin Moody (Portrayed by Michael Moran) the one witness the police depended on in order to conflict the intimidating Mercer.

    I read somewhere that the senior policewoman stated having watched this production that she was displeased with her portrayal in the show. I find it hard to believe that these scenes were in anyway fictional, knowing the pressure they were under to get a result in this case and how the upper echelons of the police always behave in such circumstances. To its credit LLB did not end with the conviction of those involved followed by a brief summary. A good number of scenes were shown after the case, covering the impact on the marriage of the parents and the other lives affected by the actions of Mercer. It is incredulous that the killer and his accomplices (Most of whom are now out of prison) had no remorse for the killing of Rhys whatsoever and it is this vagrant display of complete lack of empathy for causing the loss of life which makes this show have such wider viewing implications beyond the case it deals with. As Mrs Rhys says at one point 'Our Rhys was not in the wrong place at the wrong time, Sean Mercer was when he fired that gun'

    Essential and compelling viewing and an outstanding credit for everyone who worked on the production.
  • comment
    • Author: Madi
    I remember when Rhys was shot, the incident this drama is about, and it was an awful event and anybody who was aware of the case at the time will have no surprises with this drama. There was plenty of controversy over the whole event from poor Rhys' death, his family's strength, the age of the killers and the frustrating and seemingly all encompassing hurdle of getting witnesses to "grass".

    All of the above is covered sensitively and, with the Jones' giving their input to this drama, a fair degree of accuracy too. You obviously feel for the victim and his family but this drama also shines a light on peer pressure, the difficulty of getting someone to agree to be a witness due to the stigma and dangers of being a " grass" and the shameful enabling and apathetic attitude of some of the suspects' parents.

    Whether someone is aware of the case or not this is an interesting, gripping and emotive drama. You can't watch this and leave it not feeling anything. Utterly heartbreaking.

    RIP Rhys Jones.
  • comment
    • Author: Mr.Champions
    A story of gang violence people across the world are all to familiar with. Little 'Men' thinking they are 'big'..with iron on their hands.. sadly no amount of tattoos or owning a Glock..will ever make you a man, that take's hard work and guts.

    Brilliantly made and acted, if it was a Soap, no one would believe it. but unfortunately, yeah this happened. Hope our cousins in the USA will watch this and stop legally buying guns. They always end up for re- sale..in the wrong hands. #peace
  • comment
    • Author: Spilberg
    An utterly captivating drama, perfectly executed over four episodes with not a single flaw to be found.

    Top-notch writing, precision directing, exemplary performances from the entire cast, seamless editing, with music and cinematography that intelligently don't make themselves noticed (so nothing showy or artsy, just excellent scene-setting) perfectly paced with an overall sense of all-round good storytelling.

    Every moment of this true-life drama was suffused with authenticity, integrity, and verisimilitude, with no audience manipulation to be detected (which doesn't mean it wasn't there; just that it was artfully and subtly done). This is a rare gem that is worth watching more than once, although the subject matter is grim. Top marks.
  • comment
    • Author: Qudanilyr
    The kind of senseless murder happening all-too-often in communities these days. Sensitive, emotional, top-notch production, writing, directing and acting pulled me into the community and story. Four 45-minute parts totalling three hours, it moves along very quickly and was compelling to watch and get so drawn into this tragedy and investigation.
  • comment
    • Author: Cel
    Phew! Am I ever glad I got out of that environment! Here I am sitting in Vancouver some 55 years after growing up in a council estate. An Estate that started off being a beautiful new village and then descended into a drug filled, violent, holding cell. Just like the ones portrayed in this series.

    Liverpool's always been a place where you have to know your boundaries, you don't venture into certain areas because of their reputations. If you don't go there then you''ll be OK, but the trouble is that the residents of some of the estates are roving marauders and you can be the innocent victim if you're in their pathway.

    This series portrays it brilliantly with all of the zeitgeist of Merseyside percolating throughout the story. I have to say that it doesn't seem to have changed that much since I left, middle class people are still wonderfully polite, most of the Estate denizens are warm and natural and the yobboes are just as ugly and nasty as I remember them.

    That antisocial streak in the underclass has been developed over years and years of unemployment, hand to mouth existence, hopeless futures and a hatred of the privileged classes. With this sort of framework things go wrong , as they did in this case, but the story is told in a way that highlights the huge chasm between the poor on the Estates and the rest of normal society. The absolute disdain for any form of authority is born out of a situation that says "How are you going to punish me any more than the punishment I get from living here already?" "I don't care what you do to me!"

    You'd be hard pressed to separate the professional actors from the locals who were recruited for the series, it is so very well done by everyone involved. You'll also be hard pressed not to get through this without openly crying at some of the heart wrenching scenes.

    Truly a great production
  • comment
    • Author: bass
    This mini-series is an emotional rollercoaster. The actors in the British crime dramas are from top to bottom, off the charts good, and this one is just is no different. And this is based on a true story.
  • comment
    • Author: Ishnjurus
    The shaky cam was so bad my head was spinning and I had to give up less than 7 minutes in. I'm sure I would have been gripped by the story and drama unfolding, and that it was an accurate telling of a senseless crime, but I didn't get the chance to be able to judge that. Why directors insist on using hand held cameras that induce nausea when watching is beyond me.
  • comment
    • Author: Arador
    There are two sides to every story and this production does not present them. In fact there are three main plot strands-- one involving the victim's family, one involving the lead investigator, and one where the perpetrators and their crowd are lumped together. But all these plots are set up to make the viewer feel sorry for the victim's family. I guess that's understandable given the nature of the main crime but it does not really give us an unvarnished look at society like it should, or why this situation happened in the first place.

    I would have preferred to see the story a bit from the point of view of the boys that where charged, as well as their families. All the lower class characters in this tale are presented as untrustworthy and unreliable, out to cover things up. There is no sympathetic rendering of the struggles they face; not even the mothers are presented in any kind of sympathetic light. One of the mothers ultimately does the right thing and tells the truth in court, but then a lawyer quickly tries to discredit her statements as false because she's supposedly a known liar.

    As for the detective assigned to the case, we are told at the end he became friends with the victim's family. So obviously all scenes in which he appears are going to be slanted to make him more heroic and to make his female superior look like a villain.

    The production itself is too long. Four full hours is way too much to devote to this story. Each of the four one-hour installments I watched had at least 15 minutes that could have been cut. Meaning this could have been told in a much more compact three hours if the narrative had been tightened.

    In the first installment we get shots of the victim's mother carefully ironing and putting clothes in her son's bedroom drawers. We also see her and her husband discussing what color to paint a living room wall. As well as lingering shots of soccer balls in the backyard. Tedious and a waste of screen time that had nothing to do with the key issues of the story. In the second and third installments there are countless scenes of the police reviewing the video footage of the killing with nothing new being figured out or added to the story. A montage or lap dissolve compressing these non-events would have been sufficient. The third installment has lingering shots of the police on their computers-- at one point the director and editor cut to a shot of a keyboard as a police officer debates typing something. Why? There's no real reason for all the wasted screen time. The filmmakers do not seem to know how to tell the story more expediently. It's like their primary goal is to just fill up screen time.

    There are also a lot of long tracking shots, meant to convey realism. Some of these work rather well. Especially in the first part where the victim is killed and we have a nearly two-minute shot of Rhys' mother leaving the house and going to the car park. But after a while these long tracking shots are an artistic nuisance. In some cases you can tell the actors have to wait to deliver their dialogue because they're walking ahead of the camera crew waiting for the microphones to catch up to them so their dialogue can be audibly recorded. As a result we get a very stilted and very labored presentation of a story that is entertaining only in how transparent its biases are and how transparently artistic the people behind the camera are trying to put this over on the viewers.
  • Series cast summary:
    Sinead Keenan Sinead Keenan - Mel Jones 4 episodes, 2017
    Brían F. O'Byrne Brían F. O'Byrne - Steve Jones 4 episodes, 2017
    Matthew Roberts Matthew Roberts - Owen Jones 4 episodes, 2017
    Stephen Graham Stephen Graham - Det Supt Dave Kelly / - 4 episodes, 2017
    Elizabeth Berrington Elizabeth Berrington - Debra Taylor 4 episodes, 2017
    Michael Moran Michael Moran - Kevin Moody 4 episodes, 2017
    James Nelson-Joyce James Nelson-Joyce - James Yates 4 episodes, 2017
    Sara Powell Sara Powell - ACC Pat Gallan / - 4 episodes, 2017
    Nathan Clark Smith Nathan Clark Smith - Jordan Olssen 4 episodes, 2017
    Faye McKeever Faye McKeever - Claire Olssen 4 episodes, 2017
    Jodie McNee Jodie McNee - DC Jackie Carter / - 4 episodes, 2017
    Laura Dos Santos Laura Dos Santos - Donna Kelly 4 episodes, 2017
    Paddy Rowan Paddy Rowan - Sean Mercer 4 episodes, 2017
    Kerrie Hayes Kerrie Hayes - Sandra Oxley 4 episodes, 2017
    Robbie O'Neill Robbie O'Neill - DC Danny Jones 4 episodes, 2017
    Jack Corrie Jack Corrie - Nathan Quinn 4 episodes, 2017
    Stephen Walters Stephen Walters - DCI Mark Guinness / - 4 episodes, 2017
    Heather Bleasdale Heather Bleasdale - Vida Moody 4 episodes, 2017
    Christine Tremarco Christine Tremarco - Marie Thompson 4 episodes, 2017
    Sylvie Gatrill Sylvie Gatrill - Janice Olssen 3 episodes, 2017
    Michael Baker Michael Baker - Sam Moody 3 episodes, 2017
    Lizzie Hopley Lizzie Hopley - Marie Yates 3 episodes, 2017
    Derek Barr Derek Barr - DC Matt Perry / - 3 episodes, 2017
    Jack McMullen Jack McMullen - Dean Kelly 3 episodes, 2017
    John Mcgrellis John Mcgrellis - DI Martin Leahy 3 episodes, 2017
    Tim Steed Tim Steed - Richard Townsmead 3 episodes, 2017
    Clare Calbraith Clare Calbraith - Helen Morris / - 3 episodes, 2017
    Gemma Lawman Gemma Lawman - Reporter 3 episodes, 2017
    Sonny Beyga Sonny Beyga - Rhys Jones 2 episodes, 2017
    Jay Johnson Jay Johnson - Tony Edge 2 episodes, 2017
    Alicia Brockenbrow Alicia Brockenbrow - Carly Ellis 2 episodes, 2017
    Neil Fitzmaurice Neil Fitzmaurice - Neil Jones 2 episodes, 2017
    Andrew Schofield Andrew Schofield - Kenny Richmond 2 episodes, 2017
    Dan Renton Skinner Dan Renton Skinner - Detective Chief Superintendent Brian 'Dixie' McNeill 2 episodes, 2017
    Paddy Birkenhead Paddy Birkenhead - Dave Kelly Jnr / - 2 episodes, 2017
    Megan Dawson Megan Dawson - Jenny Kelly 2 episodes, 2017
    Olivia Manning Olivia Manning - Nicky Kelly 2 episodes, 2017
    Sonny Townsend Sonny Townsend - Neil Moody 2 episodes, 2017
    Vanessa Emme Vanessa Emme - Police Liaison Officer / - 2 episodes, 2017
    Simon Fielder Simon Fielder - Dr. Paul Johnson 2 episodes, 2017
    Michelle Butterly Michelle Butterly - Paula Kelly 2 episodes, 2017
    Samantha Robinson Samantha Robinson - Jeanette Mercer 2 episodes, 2017
    Jack Lamb Jack Lamb - Frank Yates 2 episodes, 2017
    Chris Abe Chris Abe - Armed Police Officer 2 episodes, 2017
    Graham Burton Graham Burton - Barbecue Guest / - 2 episodes, 2017
    Grant Crookes Grant Crookes - CID 2 episodes, 2017
    Trish Pope Trish Pope - Local woman / - 2 episodes, 2017
    Georgina Robinson Georgina Robinson - Mourner at funeral / - 2 episodes, 2017
    Jason Thorpe Jason Thorpe - Barrister Richard Pratt 2 episodes, 2017
    David Wilks David Wilks - Close Protection Officer 2 episodes, 2017
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