Archive TV

[Sharon H]

Franz Muller

This is a new television company with the tag "amazing crime and punishment stories from real past lives", currently developing some lesser known nineteenth century crime stories using archive material and dramatisation.
A taster, "The Crime Wave" can be seen on the website at www.archiveproductions.tv
which includes husband and wife couple Frederick and Maria Manning, hanged together in 1849 for a shocking murder known as "The Bermondsey Horror" (played by Tat Whalley and Sarah Matravers) and Franz Muller (played by Frankie Fitzgerald) known as "The First Railway Murderer" for a mugging that went wrong on a North London Railway Line train at Hackney in 1864.
Some pictures of documents from the National Archives' files on the cases also feature on the site.
It would be fab to have some feedback!

[George Hutchinson]

Sharon - are you involved in the production? I ask this as I own the handcuffs that Muller was arrested in if you are interested in showing them.

PHILIP

[Sharon H]

Wow! How fantastic. Yes I am behind this. The Muller story is local to me (Hackney) and I have been piecing things together "bottom up" you could say. I'd love to see the handcuffs and know the story behind you getting hold of them. Sounds great for including in the programme when we get started on it. Feel free to message me directly at sharon@archiveproductions.tv, probably quickest way to get message to me. Thanks so much!

[sdreid]

Hi Sharon,

What is the running time on these episodes? When and on what network will they be played? Will they be ever be shown in America or available on DVD/Blu-Ray? Will they be shot on film, digital or what?

[sdreid]

P.S.

Are you going to dig a hole in someone's kitchen floor for Manning?

[Sharon H]

We shot the promo on the website on digi-beta with high spec long lenses and it looks pretty filmic at a fraction of the cost, so that might be a good option for the future. The planned series will be 24 minute episodes, each taking on a new crime with a new twist. The four stories in the promo should be four of these six programmes. Still pitching so can't tell you more about likely international distribution as yet but will post any news as it happens!

[Sharon H]

Hey Stan,
And about the hole.... many ways to shoot the discovery, don't want to give to much away now. But the Mannings' case is a cracking story bursting to be told!

[sdreid]

Thanks Sharon,

Actually, a lot of that digital stuff looks better than film in my view.

Much thought about doing unsolved cases?

[Sharon H]

I quite like the twists in cases everyone thought were clear-cut but there's always another side to a story. Not sure the recent Crippen documentary was that convincing, but it's obvious in that case, like so many others, that there are always pieces of evidence unknown or disregarded/excluded at the time which open up the possibilities now.
If everyone knew for "sure" who JTR was i.e there had been a conviction, it would still have left a century or more of people scrutinising whether it might actually have been a wrongful conviction. No criminal justice system is perfect, whether now or a hundred or two hundred years ago.
Anyway, if the story's a good one and it's worth telling now, the more twists and turns the better!!! Does that answer the question?? (not really)

[miss marple]

Maria Manning, a french woman was hanged in black satin. Black satin then fell out of fashion. Dickens witnessed the public execution of the Mannings, and wrote an account of it, he was appalled by public excutions, which were open till 1868.
Miss Marple