The Killer Nanny: Did She Do It? review – a sensationalist take on the Louise Woodward case

Channel 4’s fondness for crass tabloid headlines is still going strong, as The Killer Nanny: Did She Do It? attests. This was a three-part documentary about the trial of Louise Woodward, convicted of killing eight-month-old baby Matthew Eappen 25 years ago. 

It is the second such programme: ITV also revisited the case in November, in a brisk one-hour edit. That one featured an awful lot of Woodward’s celebrity defence lawyer, Barry Scheck, and nobody from the prosecution side. The reason for that, it appears, was that the prosecutors had all signed up to the Channel 4 show instead. 

So here we had Gerry Leone talking us through the story, along with the paramedic who answered Woodward’s 911 call and the detective who first interviewed her. Leone spoke about the death threats that he received from Woodward supporters; the detective, Bill Byrne, still has postcards telling him to rot in hell. “Free the Nanny” T-shirts were produced. 

And the case continues to divide opinion: was Woodward guilty or innocent? Were the medical experts wrong to diagnose shaken baby syndrome, or was Leone describing what really happened when he painted a picture of Woodward losing her cool with a crying child whom she was ill-equipped to look after? 

Byrne reminded us of what Woodward had said when he attended the house: that she had “tossed” Matthew on the bed, “dropped” him on the floor, and been “a little rough”. Even that detail was awful to hear. The documentary is structured in such a way that this episode focused on the prosecution case, tonight’s on the defence, with tomorrow’s final episode looking at the aftermath. 

There is plenty of detail here, and the researchers have done a thorough job. But there was an awful sensationalism to the presentation: dramatic music, a recreation of the ambulance drive to the Eappen house, and an opening sequence featuring dramatic quotes: “There was a dead baby – someone had to pay.” The subject was ill-served by such tacky treatment.