HACKED OFF
New ITV Phone Hacking Drama Attacked on Facts and Payment to Bent Cop
Rock star reporter Nick Davies has crapped on a major new drama about Nick Davies, the rock star reporter, which is due out in Autumn on ITV.
The Upsetter can further reveal that Davies, played by David Tennant, dropped his bombshell just as ITV prepares to launch a media campaign announcing its seven-part drama on his phone hacking investigation for The Guardian.
Whatever can be eating the leather-clad legend whose love of beaded jewellery and stone-washed denim gives him the air of an ageing Laurel Canyon minstrel and not the world’s finest and beyond reproach investigative journalist?
ITV has dramatised Davies’s book Hack Attack for television after George Clooney passed on giving it the Hollywood treatment. The rugged reporter suggested it was a fear of Rupert Murdoch that scuppered the project, something the actor denied when The Upsetter called.
ITV has controversially welded the story of the 1987 murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan to its new drama about Davies titled ‘The Hack’.
In February, this newsletter exposed an attempt to whitewash the role of the senior detective Dave Cook whose corruption ruined the last chance to solve the murder and led to a £2m compensation pay out by the Met to the Morgan family.
Cook was a key source of Davies and the drama wanted to portray the cop as a hero despite findings by senior judges and an independent inquiry to the contrary.
ITV, who made the Post Office scandal drama, are about to roll out a publicity campaign for The Hack. But behind the scenes there have been major problems over the facts.
This week, letters were sent to those who will be depicted positively and negatively in the drama.
One letter to the prime suspect for the Morgan murder reveals that ITV has had to cut scenes already filmed for “editorial reasons”.
Meanwhile, the broadcaster is still refusing to say if it paid Cook a consultant fee and will be declaring this on screen.
The Morgan family are also unhappy over ITV’s blatant commercial thuggery by gazumping their well advanced plans for a drama on the 38-year struggle for justice.
For more on this everyday tale of media folk and the true crime wave … eyes down.
