What Is The Sixth Commandment

The Sixth Commandment, a BBC One series, opens with Peter (Timothy Spall) and Ben (Éanna Hardwicke) ascending to a hilltop. For the first time ever, they confess their love to one another while panting and squinting into the sun. Ben lifts Peter off the ground so that his feet are just over the grass while Peter, unable to contain his joy, puts his arms around him. The two men grip each other tightly. The terrible, true story of a lonely guy who was murdered by the one person he believed he would spend the rest of his life with makes this unlike any other love story.

The real-life account of how one of the oddest, most terrifying criminal cases in recent memory began when beloved instructor Peter Farquhar and a lovely, intelligent young student named Ben Field met is told in The Sixth Commandment. Churchwarden Field began a covert harassment campaign against Farquhar, a devoted Christian who was four decades older than he, in the early 2010s. In order to become the only heir to Farquhar's estate, Field persuaded the gay man—who had struggled with his entire life—into a relationship and took advantage of his need for company. He drugged him with hallucinogens and persuaded him to drink alcohol over a period of years. Together, they gave Farquhar the impression that he was going crazy.

In the end, Field stole Farquhar's inheritance and murdered him in 2015 while making it appear as though the 69-year-old had drunk himself to death. Then he turned his attention to his next victim, Farquhar's elderly next-door neighbour Ann Moore-Martin, a former headmistress and devout Catholic who was portrayed in the play by Anne Reid. When the two started dating, Field started writing biblical messages on Moore-Martin's bathroom mirrors, telling her to leave her home to him and starting the gaslighting process all over again. Ann finally passed away in 2017 from natural causes, but not before describing to her niece the directives she thought to be from God. When Moore-Martin's niece called the police, Field was discovered. He acknowledged to scamming both Moore-Martin and Farquhar while expressing no remorse, and he was given a minimum sentence of 36 years in prison for Farquhar's murder and other offences. Anthat is suffering from pain, loneliness, self-hatred, and grief. Ben has given me life. I also have love.

According to Spall, Farquhar's interest in the job was sparked by the internal conflict he was going through. "Within Peter, I observed a true struggle between somebody attempting to reconcile their desires with their religion," the author claims. "And within that attempt at reconciliation, that almost denial of its existence, here comes the object of a request, so precisely a response to a prayer that he cannot believe it. And in my opinion, the fact that this man discovers love after having given up on it is the true, profound sadness of the situation. And when he passed away, he truly believed it was still there.

The police investigation doesn't appear until the third and penultimate episode, which is rare for a true-crime drama; the first two episodes concentrate on Farquhar and Moore-Martin in their latter years. Phelps adds, "I didn't want to glamorise Ben," adding that she wanted to steer clear of a "cat-and-mouse" story in which the police are pitted against the bad guy.

I was so eager to share Peter and Ann's tales. I wanted to emphasise their lives rather than their deaths. Otherwise, there was just the cunning criminal and the persistent police, and even though the police were outstanding, I didn't want to give Ben Field the impression that he was the major character. The focus of the narrative should be on Peter and Ann, as well as their family and other loved ones.

Phelps employed a mountain of research materials to create the play, including Farquhar's diaries, Field's workbooks and reams of police transcripts. The pile of these materials was nearly as tall as she was. 

Additionally, Farquhar's notes served as the inspiration for a lot of the series' dialogue. "Peter wrote everything down," explains Phelps, "which meant that secretly he was describing what was being done to him. The primary source used in both the police inquiry and the following prosecution was Peter's diary.

What Is The Sixth Commandment