24 Hours in Police Custody: The Honeytrap Murder, review: better than any detective drama on TV

Detective dramas arrive on television with such regularity that they can get wearisome. Another female cop with a ball-busting attitude? Another male cop with a tragic past and a drink problem? All are knocked into a cocked hat by 24 Hours in Police Custody, an always-gripping slice of real-life detective work.

The latest edition is 24 Hours in Police Custody: The Honeytrap Murder (Channel 4), which is being told in two parts. The case made the news earlier this year. The victim, Saul Murray, welcomed two women into his flat in Luton. The women, Surpreet Dhillon and Temidayo Awe, were captured on CCTV. That same CCTV showed Murray, several hours later, staggering naked towards the door and collapsing. He had been stabbed. We were watching a murder victim die. It’s quite a shocking thing to realise.

The programme followed the case from the initial 999 call to its conclusion. Some of what we saw was familiar from TV drama: armed police battering down doors, the sullen “no comment” interviews with suspects. But there is something transfixing about seeing these things for real. Also: the look of panic on Dhillon’s face as she was arrested; the phone call to her poor children after she learned that she had been charged with murder, insisting that she was “just helping” the police and would be home soon.

Everything about this programme is fascinating, from the way that police investigations are carried out – sifting through phone records, identifying items of clothing, going back through previous histories – to the psychology of those who commit the crimes. Awe was a 21-year-old university student who had let herself get mixed up with some very bad people. “I’m going to disappoint my mum, oh my God,” she sobbed after being charged. I felt no sympathy whatsoever for her or Dhillon. They had drugged Murray and brought two male accomplices (one of whom was convicted of murder; the other three of manslaughter) to the scene in order to steal some watches that he had shown off on Instagram.

The victim was a seasoned criminal who had, with grim irony, carried out honeytrap robberies himself. But he had children. He had a father who had tried to help him get back on the straight and narrow. The police put as much effort into solving this case as they would for a more “innocent” victim.