Should the James Bulger story win an Oscar?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 January 2019

⏱️ 22 minutes

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Summary

When toddler James Bulger was abducted from a shopping centre in Merseyside in 1993 and murdered by two ten-year-old boys the country was appalled. Now a new short film has been made and nominated for an Oscar. ‘Detainment’ uses the original police interviews with the boys as a basis for the drama. It’s causing a lot of controversy as the family weren’t consulted and now want people to boycott it. We hear about the original trial from Winfred Robinson, who covered the story for the BBC, and Entertainment Correspondent Colin Paterson, who has seen the Oscar-nominated film. Producers: Duncan Barber and Philly Beaumont Mixed by Nicolas Raufast Editor: John Shields

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:06.2	Hello, I'm Matthew Price.
0:08.1	This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4,
0:10.6	a little space every weekday
0:12.2	where we ask one question about one big story.
0:15.0	Today should the James Bulger story win an Oscar?
0:27.0	I'm going to try and describe a picture. It's an image from a CCTV
0:36.8	security camera from a shopping center on Merseys and at the top in a early
0:41.7	digital font is the word mother care.
0:44.0	It's got a date stamp on it 1202 93 and a time code as well.
0:50.0	154232. And the picture 14, 42, 32.
0:53.7	And the picture itself shows a boy in a puffer jacket walking through a shopping centre, he's
1:00.0	holding the hand of a smaller child, they're walking away from the camera, there are adults around,
1:05.6	other shoppers they're walking along as well. The smaller child is James Bulger,
1:12.2	and the image, if you were around at the time of James Bulger's
1:15.7	murder is one which is both frightening and fascinating. His killing was a
1:21.7	story that appalled the whole country. It resonated around the world.
1:25.6	And we're talking about it today because a film has just been nominated for an Oscar.
1:30.8	It's called Detainment. And that film dramatises the story of James Bulger's
1:36.7	killing. It takes as its script, the police transcripts, with the two 10-year year old boys who killed him.
1:45.0	Now James Bulger's mum has called for a boycott of the film.
1:49.0	We'll speak about the Oscars row a bit later in this episode episode but we wanted to start with a woman
	...

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