‘It's a mind-boggling true story'

On location in Wales, Luke Evans tells us why he took on the role of a real-life detective who reopened two double murder cases

- Sean Marland

THE PEMBROKESHIRE MURDERS

NEW MON-WED / ITV / 9PM / EPS 1-3 of 3 / DRAMA

Luke Evans strides past a wall of blood-spattered photographs and straightens his jacket before taking a seat in a grey and chilly police investigation room.

It’s March 2020 and Luke (star of hit movies Beauty and the Beast and the Hobbit trilogy) is only days away from filming the final scenes of The Pembrokeshire Murders, as TV Times joins him on set in Wales to find out more about ITV’s new threepart real-life crime drama series. With Britain entering into a nationwide lockdown a week later, the timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous…

Luke plays real-life detective DCS Steve Wilkins of the DyfedPowys Police. In 2005, Steve risked his reputation by reopening two unsolved double murder cases that had haunted the peaceful Pembrokeshire community for almost two decades.

The brutal killings of Peter and Gwenda Dixon as they strolled the local coastal path on a sunny June afternoon in 1989 bore similarities to a crime committed at nearby Scoveston Manor four years earlier. Steve believed that convicted burglar John Cooper was responsible for both crimes but he lacked the necessary evidence to secure a conviction.

With Cooper about to be released from prison after serving time for a string of robberies, Steve knew he had to quickly make a case or watch a dangerous killer walk free.

Here, Pontypool-born Luke, 41, tells us more about Steve and his extraordinary story…