Lucan, review: a sad story of one man’s obsession with finding his mother’s aristocratic killer

How quickly did the hunt for Lord Lucan move from tragedy to farce? The missing peer became a source of comedy, a punchline of jokes, and an excuse for Fleet Street reporters to visit far-flung locations on company expenses. “I regard not finding Lord Lucan as my most spectacular success in journalism,” a Daily Mirror journalist once said. “Of course, many of my colleagues have also been fairly successful in not finding Lord Lucan. But I have successfully not found him in more exotic spots than anybody else.”

Lucan (BBC Two), a three-part documentary, reminds us that there was a terrible crime at the heart of this story. It follows Neil Berriman, a builder who was adopted as a baby and who discovered in middle age that his birth mother was Sandra Rivett, the nanny bludgeoned to death in the Lucan family home in November 1974. Berriman has spent 17 years searching for Lucan with a conviction that has tipped into fixation.

The programme provides details of the murder – there is an interview with the detective who discovered Rivett’s body, and disturbing photographs of the crime scene – and explores the various theories as to Lucan’s fate. But this is really a study of obsession, and a sad one. Berriman is emotional, frequently tearful, and clinging to the idea that he can get justice for the mother he never met.

You cannot watch this without feeling desperately sorry for him. He feels a loyalty both to her and to the adoptive mother whom he adored and who set him on this trail by leaving him a newspaper article about the Lucan case. Nevertheless, it is framed a bit like a thriller.

Berriman, aided by journalist Glen Campbell – you will form your own opinion as to whether Campbell has been a helpful presence in Berriman’s life – follows leads that suggest that Lucan reinvented himself as a Buddhist monk and is currently living in the suburbs of Brisbane. To me, he looks nothing like Lucan and is clearly almost a foot shorter, but Berriman is convinced, and mounts an undercover operation to trap him.

This part is an uncomfortable watch, sometimes verging on the absurd. Throughout, the sympathetic voice of director Colette Camden can be heard gently asking Berriman if some of his ideas are a bit far-fetched, or suggesting that it might be time to move on. But this is a man who has lost two mothers, and is unable to give up the fight.