Sculptress, The

1 9 9 6 (UK)
4 x 50 minute episodes

Pauline Quirke padded up in a 22-stone fat suit and took a major sidestep from Birds of a Feather to play Olive Martin – the suburban woman serving a life sentence for the gruesome murder and dismemberment of her mother and sister – in this four-part psychological thriller for the BBC.

Divorced journalist Rosalind Leigh (Caroline Goodall) hadn’t written much since her eight-year-old daughter had been killed in a car crash while her drunken husband was driving.

Now, her editor wanted Roz to write a book about Martin – nicknamed “the sculptress” – and to get to know her, get her to talk, and find out why she did it. Roz reluctantly agreed.

The morbidly obese young Olive Martin was uneducated, defensive, sly, manipulative and, quite possibly a compulsive liar.

So Roz was very surprised when she began to think that Olive may just be innocent. And if Olive didn’t murder the two victims, who could have and why with such terrible mutilation?

Roz began interviewing those who knew Olive and family members who remembered Olive’s father, a wealthy man who died shortly before the murders.

She met ex-copper Hal Hawksley (Christopher Fulford) – who originally investigated the case – at the pub he now owned and discovered someone was trying to put him out of business so he would sell his property. She also met the lawyer who defended Olive (not very well) and who was also the trustee of the money Olive’s father left to an unknown child somewhere in Australia.

She talked with the neighbours, including a man who might have been more than just friends with Olive’s father and the man’s wife, a nervous woman who cleaned compulsively.

There was also a wealthy property developer who was far too smooth by half.

As for Olive herself – the huge, soft woman with a face that could look so cheerful one moment and so resentful the next, whose mother ignored her and whose attractive, boy-hungry sister made merciless fun of her – we learned that she had a secret lover, that she became pregnant, and that her sister had found out.

And now Olive Martin sat in prison, sometimes sullen, sometimes angry, sometimes weary. She stole thick candles from the prison chapel and secretly carved them into figures.

The chapel priest didn’t know; he was too busy speculating about Olive in ways that made us uneasy and which Olive used to her advantage.

Roz and Hal Hawksley fell in love and finally separated the threads in the story, identifying the murderer.

But when Olive was released and greeted Roz with a smile of pure, innocent joy, could the smile perhaps have been a little too knowing?

Made shortly after the West case, its scenes of blood and mutilation were met with disapproval from some quarters. But Quirke’s excellent performance and the thrilling script resulted in high ratings. The series was based on a novel by Minette Walters.

The show was broadcast as two 100-minute episodes in the US in 1997.

Olive Martin
Pauline Quirke
Rosalind ‘Roz’ Leigh
Caroline Goodall
Hal Hawksley
Christopher Fulford
Peter Crew
Michael Percival
Prison Officer #1
Sophie Stanton
Prison Officer #2
Maureen Hibbert
Father Julian
Dermot Crowley
Edward Clarke
David Horovitch
Dorothy Clarke
Ann Davies